This section of the project explores the interconnections among ideas, institutions, and practices related to democracy, both within Latin America and across the Atlantic. Scholarship in global history has increasingly emphasized the significance of the mobility of people, texts, and ideas in shaping local practices, thereby challenging nation-centered narratives that overlook broader transnational processes. The historiography has also moved away from diffusionist models that presuppose a unidirectional transmission of democratic ideals from Europe and the United States to other regions. This shift is especially pertinent to the study of democracy in Latin America and the Iberian Atlantic, a field that has received comparatively less scholarly attention.
By expanding the analytical frame beyond the confines of the nation-state, our research aims to illuminate the potential and limitations of the circulation of people and ideas between the 1810s and the 1930s. Among other themes, we are particularly interested in examining the hierarchies of knowledge that structured debates on democracy across different regions and within diverse social, racial, gender, and ethnic groups. We also seek to address the tensions inherent in the emergence and consolidation of Latin American nation-states over this extended period, with their regional and hemispheric entanglements.
As part of this initiative, we are organizing a two-day conference titled "Latin America and the Global History of Democracy: Ideas in Motion (1810–1930)", which will take place at the University of Oxford on October 31–November 1, 2025. Further details will be shared in our Events and News sections as the date approaches.
