Common and Contending Ideas of Hemispheric Order: The Projects for a Pan-American Legal Order and a Latin American Union, 1911-1928

JUAN PABLO SCARFI

Cambridge

Simposio; Re-thinking U.S.-Latin American Relations: Historiographical and Contemporary Debates; 2011

University of Cambridge, Centre of Latin American Studies

In this presentation I will advance the argument that in order to understand the history of international ideas about hemispheric order and governance in the Americas (about international law, organisation, intellectual cooperation) in a global/hemispheric perspective, it is worth grasping how certain concepts and terms that were intellectually discussed in a continental scale emerged, developed and were then contested. In other words, by examining the creation of Pan-American networks of international law and Latin American reactions and responses to this project, I will explore to what extent it is possible to trace through a Cambridge school approach a continental intellectual history of these common and contending ideas of hemispheric order. I will show that there was a continental dialogue among US and Latin American hemispheric intellectuals and statesmen, where common Pan-American and contending Latin-American anti-imperialist visions emerged and rivalled with one another.