The history of liberal internationalism emphasizes Kant, British empire, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR. But what can we learn about liberal internationalism if we look elsewhere? In a new article published in the American Political Science Review, PAIS's Tom Long and Carsten-Andreas Schulz (Cambridge University) explore the international thought that underpinned Mexico's response to the French intervention in the 1860s. In those years, Latin Americans faced a flurry of incursions, in which European liberals embraced imperialism to uplift supposedly "backwards" peoples—a phenomenon Jennifer Pitts termed the “turn to empire.” The article explores how Mexico's Benito Juárez and his partisans enunciated their own ideals for the organization of world politics, and how this vision gained coherence in response to European liberals’ racialized discourse and their defense of intervention under the guise of advancing civilization. In doing so, the article provides a novel account of the origins of Mexico’s (and Spanish America’s) distinct internationalist tradition, as well as an early liberal critique of imperialism from the Global South.