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The forward move on to the American continent was the work not of princes or capitalists at home in Europe, but of gold-hungry frontiersmen spurred on by the rapid exhaustion of the islands’ deposits. Without the short-lived gold rush on the Caribbean islands and the nearby Tierra Firme, the impetus towards the territorial conquest of the mainland
... See moreJohn Darwin • After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000
Dans un essai publié en 2000, intitulé Le Mystère du capital et sous-titré Pourquoi le capitalisme triomphe à l’Ouest et échoue partout ailleurs, l’économiste péruvien Hernando de Soto avançait une explication alors inédite au sous-développement persistant d’une large partie de la planète. Selon lui, les citoyens des pays les plus pauvres sont péna
... See moreStéphane Loignon • Big Bang Blockchain. La seconde révolution d'internet (ACTUALITE SOCIETE) (French Edition)
Despite his seeming satisfaction with the country’s original dimensions, Jefferson came to be known as an expansionist for his acquisition of Louisiana, which extended the country far west of the Mississippi. Yet that was more of an impulse buy than a considered purchase.
Daniel Immerwahr • How to Hide an Empire
el gobierno de Juan José Arévalo lo expulsó del Ejército y los jueces lo condenaron a muerte, una condena diferida varias veces. Su fuga, el 11 de junio de 1951, de la Penitenciaría, lo hizo célebre en todo el país. Había dos versiones sobre ella.
Mario Vargas Llosa • Tiempos recios (Spanish Edition)
Trinidad Oliva era un gran admirador del Generalísimo Trujillo y reconocía, porque había estado allá, que había convertido la República Dominicana en un país moderno y próspero, con las mejores Fuerzas Armadas de todo el Caribe. «Porque su jefe es un hombre de carácter —afirmó—. Un gran patriota. Y, además, tiene unos huevos de elefante». Hizo una
... See moreMario Vargas Llosa • Tiempos recios (Spanish Edition)
For it was only by concentrating upon a few subtropical commodities raised by slave labour that agricultural colonization in the New World could be made profitable. From the 1660s onward, sugar was king, with tobacco a distant second and cocoa and chocolate trailing behind.15 But even sugar paled in comparison with the importance of silver mined in
... See moreJohn Darwin • After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000
within thirty years of Columbus’s first American landfall, the conquest of the Aztec Empire by Cortés and his company of adventurers signalled that European intrusion into the Americas held a different significance from the piecemeal colonization of Europe’s oceanic periphery or Portugal’s hijacking of Asian trade.
John Darwin • After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000
Simón Bolívar, their liberator, suggested an answer as early as 1815: there would never be, he acknowledged, a United States of Latin America.86 One reason was geography. It might be easier to rule an empire from its seaports than from its interior, but this didn’t prepare a nation to rule itself: the internal barriers of climate, topography, habit
... See moreJohn Lewis Gaddis • On Grand Strategy
Under the appointed mainland officials served elected Puerto Rican ones, less powerful but much cannier about local affairs. Chief among these was Luis Muñoz Marín, the leader of the island’s dominant party, who towered over the political scene from the 1940s through the 1960s. John Gunther deemed him “the most important living Puerto Rican.”