This unique volume analyzes the Pacific’s influence on Latin America between 1850 and 1950, demonstrating how the Pacific Ocean world is an intrinsic part of the modern history of Latin America.

Since the end of the Cold War, Latin America has witnessed a veritable explosion of “vernacular” or non-national sovereignties, ranging from plurinational citizenship to secessionist movements. While each has been the subject of scholarly discussion and debate, no one has asked why the nation-state came to be regarded as so deeply problematic by such a wide range of social actors across the region.

Re-Orienting Latin American History seeks to provide an interdisciplinary, transnational explanation, analyzing vernacular sovereignties that proliferated in Pacific-facing Latin America between the gold rush (1849) and the outbreak of the Cold War (circa 1950). Using diverse methodologies, sources, and scales, these essays trace circuits of capital, ideas, and people across maritime and terrestrial space from San Francisco to the Andes, exploring Black and Indigenous refugee regions, ephemeral republics, corridors of capital, and transnational revolutionary imaginaries. Rather than comparing nation-states and considering them as deviations from normative national political projects, Fallaw and Nugent set out to understand alternative forms of sovereignty on their own terms. This collection transcends both history’s transnational turn and anthropology’s broad-ranging critique of the nation-state as an analytic category.