The author of this small volume is a well-known writer devoted to world history whose interest in Latin America seems to have developed rather late. Born in 1889, he had reached the age of sixty-four before he ever traveled in any part of this region. He visited Mexico in 1953, Guatemala in 1958, Puerto Rico in 1962, Venezuela in 1963, and Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile during the last quarter of 1966, several years after achieving fame by publishing his ten-volume Study of History. This magnum opus revealed a grasp of Latin American history somewhat less than satisfactory to specialists in this field.
Anything published by Arnold Toynbee is likely to be both thoughtful and interesting. The volume now under inspection deals mainly with the countries through which he toured rapidly during the latter part of 1966, although he devotes several pages to Mexico and Guatemala and a few to Venezuela and Puerto Rico and concludes with some generalizations regarding Indian America and Latin America’s current efforts at integration. He places Latin America in a global setting with somewhat more emphasis on geography and preconquest Indian civilizations than on contemporary affairs, although the latter are accorded more attention in the cases of Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and Puerto Rico. Most of the facts he presents are likely to be familiar to specialists in this field, but his generalizations and speculations should appeal to all speculative minds. He stresses river basins, deserts, oases, jungles, cities, religions, colonial and contemporary architecture (especially that of Brazil’s new capital in the interior), the population explosion, city slums, and the restless masses. His mood, like that of many others of our day, is rather pessimistic. This handsome little book deserves a place in all of our libraries, even though Toynbee has produced a philosophic travelogue rather than an outline of the recent history of the Latin American nations and their foreign relations.
