Latin America and the peripheral origins of nineteenth-century international order
Latin America and the peripheral origins of nineteenth-century international order
Key contacts: Dr Tom Long
Funding: AHRC
Partners: Dr Carsten-Andreas Schulz, University of Cambridge
Start date: 01.09.2021
End date: 31.05.2026
Project overview
The late nineteenth century marked the beginning of the modern multilateral order, laying the foundation for the international system we know today. This project recenters the standard narrative of how this system developed, instead emphasizing how Latin America’s participation shaped the “transformation of the world.” In doing so, it challenges the common notion that the Global North propagated a world order without the input or influence of the South. Latin America, as the first region to achieve independence from colonial rule, advanced a republican vision of international order.
This "republican internationalism" emphasized self-determination as the cornerstone of sovereign states’ claim to rightful membership in international society. Thus legitimated by popular sovereignty, even weak states should be shielded from the great power domination. Such an order aimed at the common good rather than the promotion of dynastic and imperial interests. After decades of conflict over the constitution of the new states, post-independence leaders managed to consolidate republican rule while also fending off a new wave of European interventions in the 1860s. With renewed self-confidence, these leaders demanded greater participation and rights in the international order. In the following decades, Latin America’s elites walked a fine line between resistance and accommodation, taking anti-imperial stances abroad while pursuing their own “civilizing missions” at home. Latin Americans gradually gained a seat at the table of world politics, calling for an inter-state order premised on non-intervention, territorial integrity, and universal participation. But the region’s diplomatic conquests prompted backlash. In the wake of the First World War, the victorious powers restructured international politics in ways that nodded to the concerns of the periphery but fundamentally preserved great power privilege. Latin American ideas and agency shaped the development of global politics, but not always in the direction they desired.