SOURCE: Jaksić, Iván. “The Diplomacy of Independence.” In Andres Bello: Scholarship and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, pp. 63-93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

In the following excerpt, Jaksić considers Bello's role as a political figure representing the interests of Latin America in England, examining his relationships with other notable Latin American political figures and authors, and his Spanish language journals, Biblioteca Americana and El Repertorio Americano.

London in the 1820s became the hub of diplomatic, financial, and cultural transactions between Great Britain and the newly independent countries of Latin America. After the fall of Napoleon, Great Britain was unquestionably the leading power in the world. No longer needing to maintain an alliance with Spain, the British government gradually moved from a steadfast policy of neutrality to a pragmatic policy of limited recognition of those countries of Spanish America that appeared to have made some headway in the...