The independence achieved by the states of Latin America in the nineteenth century was political only. These twenty-odd new nations, varying greatly in size, in peoples and in resources, suspicious of their former rulers and of each other, had one characteristic in common: a heavy dependence upon events and movements outside their own borders. As specialised primary producers, they had to rely on foreign markets to dispose of their goods and on foreign investment to develop their resources. As heirs of revolution and often victims of political and financial instability, many of them experienced active foreign intervention. In the nineteenth century the intervening powers were usually European; except for the episode of the Texan war, and the period of impotence during the American civil war, the United States government upheld Latin-American independence. It not only disapproved of European interference and influence; on the whole it refrained from interference itself. In the twentieth century, however, there was to be a dramatic exchange of political roles. European influence declined; North American influence increased; and some of the major Latin-American states began to move haltingly towards a real independence. The process was punctuated and accelerated by two world wars and a world depression of unexampled severity.

In 1898 Spain, after a brief war with the United States, lost the last fragments of a great American empire—Cuba and Puerto Rico. No longer feared and hated as an ‘imperialist’ power, Spain was to become the object of sentimental respect and affection and the centre of Pan-Hispanic feeling. Great Britain, though a colonial power, still by far the largest investor in Latin America, the principal source of manufactured goods and the biggest single market for food and raw materials, showed less and less inclination to political interference, especially since the growing naval power of Germany made it necessary for British governments to court North American friendship.