Between 1810 and 1825, 7,000 English, Scottish and Irish mercenaries sailed to Gran Colombia to fight against Spanish colonial rule under the rebel forces of Simon Bolivar. Their motives were mixed. Some travelled for money, others travelled for honour. Adventuring Through Spanish Colonies explores the lives of these men - their encounters with other soldiers, indigenous people, local women and slaves - as recounted in documents that fall outside the usual remit of military, political and economic historians. Matthew Brown considers the social and cultural aspects of the presence of these...

The Reinvention of Mexico explores the ideological conflict between neoliberalism and nationalism that has been at the core of economic and political developments in Latin America since the mid-1980s. It focuses on Mexico, which offers a unique opportunity to study one of the ruptures in 20th-century political thought that has come to define an era of unprecedented globalization.
The book examines how neoliberals dismantling the statist economy in Mexico under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-94) confronted the dominant, official ideology upon which the country's development had...