Andrès Bello

“Bello was born in Caracas in the 1780s. He was Simon Bolivar’s tutor. He then came to London in 1810 as part of a diplomatic mission to try and persuade the British to support the Venezuelans in their recent struggle with Spain for independence or at least self-government. He then stayed for nearly 20 years in London, living in Euston in conditions of some penury, working with James Mill and Jeremy Bentham…This excellent biography shows – not unlike the Cañizares volume – how ideas were shared to an appreciable degree across North and South Atlantic worlds. Bello’s inaugural speech in Santiago, for instance, is very similar in approach to that of Cardinal Newman’s ‘Idea of a University’.” Read more...

The best books on Latin American History

James Dunkerley, Political Scientist