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Alan Knight will discuss his latest collection of essays with Jeremy Adelman and Natalia Milanesio. Bandits and Liberals, Rebels and Saints offers a distinct perspective on several overarching themes in Latin American history, spanning approximately two centuries, from 1800 to 2000. Major themes include the sociopolitical roots and impact of banditry; the character and evolution of liberalism; religious conflict; the divergent historical trajectories of Peru and Mexico; the nature of informal empire and internal colonialism; and the region’s revolutionary history—viewed through the twin prisms of British perceptions and comparative global history. Knight’s approach is ambitious and comparative—sometimes ranging beyond Latin America and combining relevant social theory with robust empirical detail. He tries to offer answers to big questions while challenging alternative answers and approaches, including several recently fashionable ones.

Alan Knight is Emeritus Professor of Latin American History at Oxford University. His chief interest is twentieth-century Latin American history, with a focus on Mexico, agrarian society, state-building and revolutions. He is the author of The Mexican Revolution (2 vols, Cambridge, 1986) US-Mexican Relations, 1910-40 (San Diego, 1987); of the chapter on Mexico, 1930-1946, in The Cambridge History of Latin America (Vol. VII, 1990); and of two volumes of a three volume general history of Mexico, Mexico: From the Beginning to the Conquest, and Mexico: The Colonial Era (Cambridge, 2002). He has written several articles dealing with aspects of twentieth-century Mexico (state-building, popular movements, education and culture, current politics) and co-edited The Mexican Petroleum Industry in the 20th Century (1992). He previously taught at the University of Essex and the University of Texas at Austin, where he held the C.B. Smith Chair, and in 1986 was a visiting fellow at the Center for US-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His work has been recognized with several awards, including the Order of the Aztec Eagle from the Mexican government. In 1986 he was awarded the Albert Beveridge Prize and in 1987 the Bolton Prize from the Conference on Latin American History for his two-volume work on the Mexican Revolution

Jeremy Adelman is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History and Director of the Global History Lab at Princeton University. He is the author of four books, most recently Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman (2013). He is currently at work on two books: Latin America: A Global History, forthcoming with Princeton University Press; and Earth Hunger, a study of how writers and artists, diplomats and ecologists, have been wrestling with the meaning of global inter-dependence and attitudes to strangers from the 1850s to the present.

Natalia Milanesio is Professor of Latin American History at the University of Houston and is currently Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at UCL Institute of the Americas. She is the author of the monographs Workers Go Shopping in Argentina. The Rise of Popular Consumer Culture (2012) and Destape. Sex, Democracy, and Freedom in Postdictatorial Argentina (2019). While in London she will share her current research on the rise of feminism in 1980s Argentina, examining the particularities of women’s activism during democratic restorations.


All welcome – This event is free, but booking is required.

Details on how to join this session will be sent to all registered attendees 24 hours in advance.  Booking will therefore close the day before the scheduled date.