The New World of the Gothic Fox: Culture and Economy in English and Spanish America

About this book

Claudio Vliz adopts the provocative metaphor of foxes and hedgehogs that Isaiah Berlin used to describe opposite types of thinkers. Applying this metaphor to modern culture economic systems and the history of the New World Vliz provides an original and lively approach to understanding the development of English and Spanish America over the past 500 years. According to Vliz the dominant cultural achievements of Europes English- and Spanish-speaking peoples have been the Industrial Revolution and the Counter-Reformation respectively. These overwhelming cultural constructions have strongly influenced the subsequent historical developments of their great cultural outposts in North and South America. The British brought to the New World a stubborn ability to thrive on diversity and change that was entirely consistent with their vernacular Gothic style. The Iberians by contrast brought a cultural tradition shaped like a vast baroque dome a monument to their successful attempt to arrest the changes that threatened their imperial moment. Vliz writes with erudition and wit using a multitude of sourceshistorians and classical sociologists Greek philosophers todays newspaper sports pages and modern literatureto support a novel explanation of the prosperity and expanding cultural influence of the gothic fox and the economic and cultural decline endured by the baroque hedgehog.