Abstract
This article seeks to shed light on British academia's response to the coup d'état in Chile in 1973 from a global history approach, arguing that the concern expressed from the academic world transcended the bipolarity of the global context to appeal to a cross-cutting defence of human rights and university autonomy. To this end, the Judith Hart and the Chilean Solidarity Campaign collections were reviewed in the Labour History Archive in Manchester, in addition to documents from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office at the National Archives. The above bibliography was complemented by secondary source bibliography.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 373-386 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Bulletin of Latin American Research |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The author is very grateful to Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID, National Agency of Research and Development), postdoctoral project number 3180014 for making this research possible.
Funding Information:
In parallel, British students who began their research trips to Latin American countries encountered the influence that currents like Marxism and theories of dependence exerted on Latin American policies. At the same time, this fostered these students' interest in social sciences and aroused growing sympathy for revolutionary movements. This development was complemented by the effect of travels funded by the Parry Commission and the Ford Foundation by renowned academics such as Eric Hobsbawm, who decried the region's inequality. A British student body influenced by the social protests of the 1960s and an expansion of British social sciences close to Marxist thinkers such as Perry Anderson led British academia's attention to the development of political events in Latin America to be favourably inclined towards revolutionary processes, with the in Chile and the fate of the Unidad Popular (UP, Popular Unity) project one of the paradigmatic cases of the shift in the orientation of British studies of Latin America (Miller, 2018 ). coup d'état
Funding Information:
The objective of the cooperation financed by the government agency gave shape to the Reorientation Programme, which allowed fellows to connect their studies in British academia with their reinsertion in Chile, strengthening ties between the academic refugee community and preparing the way for their future employment in Chile. Together with the Swedish Development Cooperation Agency and WUS, a new programme of grants was funded to provide for the return to Chile and reintegration in the workplace of refugees who had received British training. It awarded 515 Chile reinsertion grants between 1978 and 1986 (World University Service UK, 1986 : 39).
Funding Information:
British academia's concern for the fate of Chilean students and professors has its origin in the Parry Commission, convened by the Foreign Office in 1965 due to concern over the lack of competitiveness in British economic interests in Latin America, choosing to address it with an academic approach. As a result, institutes were created within universities aimed at the in‐depth study of the region's economic possibilities. Oxford University's Saint Anthony's College was a precursor in the attention assigned to Latin America, even before the Parry Commission, and it accelerated its efforts in light of the Cuban Revolution. The college received funding from private foundations such as the Astor Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust and the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) to set up specialised study groups and seminars on Latin America. This sparked the interest of other universities such as the University of London, but these continued to be relatively isolated initiatives with a few university chairs focused on Latin American studies scattered throughout Britain (Paquette, 2019 ). This interest, along with the determined support of the Foreign Office in the wake of the Parry Commission report, made the necessary contribution to establishing the structure for Latin American studies in Britain. For the Foreign Office, the focus on Latin America should consider the Cold War context, as ‘in the world balance of power, Latin America could provide remarkable reinforcement to the West’ and, on the contrary, ‘if Latin America swings her weight against the West, it could be severely damaging’ (Paquette, 2019 : 18).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Society for Latin American Studies.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geography, Planning and Development
- Development