Behind the ancient artifacts exhibited in our museums lies a secret past—of travel, desire, the quest for knowledge, and even theft. Such is the case with the objects of Mesoamerican culture so avidly collected, cataloged, and displayed by the British in the nineteenth century. Informal Empire recaptures the history of those artifacts from Mexico and Central America that stirred Victorian interest—a history that reveals how such objects and the cultures they embodied were incorporated into British museum collections, panoramas, freak shows, adventure novels, and records of imperial administrators.

Robert D. Aguirre draws on a wealth of previously untapped historical information to show how the British colonial experience in Africa and the Near East gave rise to an “informal imperialism” in Mexico and Central America. Aguirre’s work helps us to understand what motivated the British to beg, borrow, buy, and steal from peripheral cultures they did not govern. With its original insights, Informal Empire points to a new way of thinking about British imperialism and, more generally, about the styles and forms of imperialism itself.

Robert D. Aguirre is Professor of English at Wayne State University.  He is the author of Mobility and Modernity: Panama in the Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Imagination.

"Aguirre’s fresh approach to imperialism stimulates alternative thinking among Hispanists who bring other information to the history of the region discussed. His scholarly thoroughness will cause everyone to work harder in the future to balance what he says against what we have always said about imperialism and nineteenth-century Hispanic America."—Hispanic AmericanHistorical Review

"Aguirre introduces new ideas about both British Imperialism and imperialism in general. He provides a fascinating history and analysis of the great collections of imperial objects."—British Bulletin of Publications

"Aguirre’s study convincingly illustrates the successes and failures of the British informal empire and is an interesting and very much quotable investigation."—Dissidences: Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism

"Aguirre’s work is worthy of the long scholarly tradition that, in part, it explores. He reveals its darker side. He speaks for those who had no voice and wrote no history."—Journal of British Studies

"Informal Empire is well-written and engaging. Providing a nuanced treatment of important, and relatively unfamiliar terrain."—The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History

"Recognizing that scholarship has to a large degree ignored the transatlantic cultural exchange that took place between Britain and Latin America in the nineteenth century, Robert Aguirre fleshes out this complex relationship by focusing on the untold stories behind the objects of culture. A very well conceived and executed work."—Material Culture

"His research stands as superb achievement: Aguirre has mined hitherto unexamined archives in the Foreign and Colonial Offices and painstakingly reconstructed specific exhibitions from periodicals, advertisements, and ephemera, rather than generalizing about the panorama or the freak show."—SEL: Studies in English Literature

"Aguirre delivers a rich historical narrative of how Britons, private citizens and public servants alike, sought out and transported ancient artifacts to London for display in museums, private collections and exhibitions. The author convincingly expands the geographical scope of those who study British imperialism and perhaps in eerily similar ways to how Mexican artifacts were meant to encourage Victorian investors, will hopefully spark much more scholarly interest in this area."—Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

"Aguirre has written an important book that usefully expands and complicates our notion of colonial discourse."—CLIO

"Aguirre’s engagement with this timely topic makes his text all the more appealing for museum studies, literary studies, and imperial history. I have already taught this 2005 release twice in history seminars, and imagine that it will continue to help students and scholars find their ways beyond the exhibitionary complex."—Lara Kriegel, Victorian Studies