Funded by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, Dr Sarah Washbrook is working on a project to compare the social and political impacts of export development in southern Mexico with other regions of Latin America, including Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela, in order to explore the relationship between ethnicity and labour markets in the region during the period c.1820-c.1945. Although there is a growing literature on ethnicity and national identity in Latin America and an increasingly detailed economic history of the region, the literature often separates economic and cultural phenomena and fails to adequately address either the material base of cultural politics or the significance of cultural politics in influencing economic policies and outcomes. By comparing labour institutions and practices throughout the Latin American republics Dr Washbrook is aiming to bridge those literatures and to throw new light on the inter-related questions of race and ethnicity, national identity, state formation and the political economy of economic development in Latin America before 1945. The research thereby aims to further our understanding of the term 'modernization' and of the meaning and impact of globalization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.