Americana : the Americas in the world around 1850 (or 'seeing the elephant' as the theme for an imaginary western / James Dunkerley.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Dramatis Personae -- A Little Time (and Space) -- Marking Time -- US Time -- Latin American Time -- Indigenous Time -- Atlantic Space -- First Case -- The Queen volume John Mitchel, The Commission Court, Dublin, May 1848 -- Cultures in Contention -- Historiographies -- Religion and Rome -- Old Spain -- Civilisations and Barbarisms -- Race, Custom and Difference -- Southern Arcadia -- http://wetness.women.whitman -- Feminist Forepieces -- Singing Sex -- Marx and Bolivar -- Second Case -- Myra Clark Gaines volume Relf and Chew, Supreme Court of the United States, February 1852 -- Political Economies -- Explanations of Empire -- Trade -- Tariffs and Textiles -- Land of Plenty (for Some) -- On the Road to Somewhere -- Slavery Days -- Latin Bondage -- Confronting the Slave Trade -- Third Case -- Mariano Donato Munoz, defendant before the Supreme Court of Bolivia, June-December 1850 -- Empires at War (and Nearly So) -- Becoming American (Again) -- Destiny Manifest, Elephant Visible -- Heroes without a Cause? -- Politics in Command -- Sights on the Mosquito Shore -- Kings and Consuls -- Testing the Balance of Power -- The Grey-eyed Man (and the Tall Fellow) -- The Course of the Mexican-American War -- The Mosquito Shore and Nicaragua, 1844-60.

"Americana is arranged around four major themes: time and space, culture, political economy and international relations. Between these more general discussions are edited transcripts and commentaries on three court cases from the period which both divert and illuminate: John Mitchel's 1848 conviction for treason in Dublin which led him through Bermuda, Tasmania and Nicaragua before joining the Confederate cause in the US Civil War; Myra Gaines's suit for the return of her legacy which reveals her Sligo-born father to have conspired against Jefferson and treated with Napoleon's agents in the sale of Louisiana; Mariano Munoz's trial for releasing a prisoner on Good Friday in the style of Pontius Pilate which draws the curtain back on Francisco Burdett O'Connor, prefect of Tarija, elder brother of the Chartist leader Feargus and Simon Bolivar's chief of staff."--Jacket.