The political and historiographical discourses of the British intellectual and traveler James Bryce (1838–1922) have been characterized as representative of the late-Victorian liberal thought. Following this interpretative framework, scholarship has focused on the analysis of the key principles of Bryce’s liberal ideology, such as “self-government”, “democracy” and “international law.” This article examines a scarcely discussed aspect of the Brycean discourses: their colonialist imprint, which is particularly evident in Bryce’s historical-political interpretations of Latin American nations. This article contends that in his work South America: Observations and Impressions (1912), Bryce built a scientific discourse, a knowledge that, framed in late-Victorian British liberal nationalism and imperial liberalism, inferiorized and discredited Latin American nations and justified the economic and cultural dominance that the European civilization, and in particular, the British Empire, exercised over them.

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“偶然的国家”，“正在形成的国家”：詹姆斯·布莱斯对拉丁美洲国家的殖民主义解释

英国知识分子和旅行家詹姆斯·布莱斯（James Bryce，1838-1922 年）的政治和史学论述被描述为维多利亚晚期自由主义思想的代表。遵循这一解释框架，学术界重点分析了布莱斯自由主义意识形态的关键原则，例如“自治”、“民主”和“国际法”。本文考察了布莱斯话语中一个鲜有讨论的方面：他们的殖民主义烙印，这在布莱斯对拉丁美洲国家的历史政治解释中尤为明显。本文认为，布莱斯在他的著作《南美洲：观察与印象》（1912 年）中建立了一种科学话语，一种以维多利亚时代晚期英国自由民族主义和帝国自由主义为框架的知识，