Exile and Nation-State Formation in Argentina and Chile, 1810–1862 (Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series)

This book traces the impact of exile in the formation of independent republics in Chile and the Río de la Plata in the decades after independence. Exile was central to state and nation formation, playing a role in the emergence of territorial borders and Romantic notions of national difference, while creating a transnational political culture that spanned the new independent nations. Analyzing the mobility of a large cohort of largely elite political émigrés from Chile and the Río de la Plata across much of South America before 1862, Edward Blumenthal reinterprets the political thought of well-known figures in a transnational context of exile. As Blumenthal shows, exile was part of a reflexive process in which elites imagined the nation from abroad while gaining experience building the same state and civil society institutions they considered integral to their republican nation-building projects. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii Introduction: The Floating Province of Exile (Edward Blumenthal)....Pages 1-33 Political Displacement and Independence: Commerce, Indigenous Peoples and Exile (1810–1839) (Edward Blumenthal)....Pages 35-84 Epistolary Exchange and the Exile Experience: Transnational Networks Before the Nation (Edward Blumenthal)....Pages 85-126 Political Exile, Labor Markets and Institution-Building (Edward Blumenthal)....Pages 127-169 The Practice and Politics of Exile: Nation-State Formation from Abroad (Edward Blumenthal)....Pages 171-217 Exile Representations of Chilean Exceptionalism (Edward Blumenthal)....Pages 219-267 Narratives of Exile, Narratives of Nationhood (Edward Blumenthal)....Pages 269-316 Floating Provinces: Exile and the Formation of Independent Republics (Edward Blumenthal)....Pages 317-332 Back Matter ....Pages 333-366