Since 1945 Britain’s economic interest in Latin America has dwindled to almost nothing. Its manufactured exports to the region began to encounter stiff competition from other countries even at the beginning of this century, and the two world wars proved devastating blows. Where it once imported foodstuffs and raw materials in large quantities from Latin America, in the 1930s it preferred to protect the interests of Commonwealth exporters. Direct British investments in Latin America began to stagnate in the 1920s, suffered a significant decrease during the depression, World War II, and the immediate postwar period, and have only begun to increase slightly in the last ten years. As a result, British foreign policy has increasingly narrowed its focus to three territorial disputes—Belize, Guyana, and the Malvinas. And despite the spurt of academic interest since the 1960s stimulated by the creation of Latin American centers following the Parry report, funding for the study of the region steadily dwindled under the Thatcher government. The secular decline of Britain (the recent turnaround notwithstanding), the increasing number of players in the world economy, and the rise of Latin American manufacturing are the culprits, and it is difficult to see how government or individual effort, no matter how well meaning, can do much to reverse these trends.
The Royal Institute of International Affairs has, nevertheless, for some years sponsored a study group made up of business representatives, government officials, and scholars interested in Latin America to examine these issues and make recommendations. In 1987-88 the group invited a number of experts to address various aspects of British-Latin American relations since 1945, and the present book is the result. The chapters on commerce, investment, and debt contain useful tabular data (although not always for the same years). A chapter on oil and other minerals includes a succinct survey of Latin America’s energy reserves. But aside from a chapter by Lawrence Whitehead, none contain much analysis. Whitehead compares the British connection to Latin America to that of other European countries and argues that it will be within the European community that Britain will find a meaningful relationship with the region. Victor Bulmer-Thomas provides an able summary and does his best to bring out the larger implications of the issues raised in the various chapters, but generally the book suffers from its original and narrow diagnostic purpose, its multiple authorship, and the unfortunate propensity of those who care about a region to bemoan the fact that others do not.