Symposium "Postimperial possibilities in the Iberian Pacific and Atlantic Worlds (1808-1898)"

The latest book by Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Post-Imperial Possibilities. Eurasia, Eurafrica, Afroasia, show us that the end of empires did not teleologically lead to the construction of sovereign leviathans or the assumption of the principle of national self-determination. The international global order based on the normative model of the nation-state is not the necessary consequence of universal history but rather the result of a series of short-term political decisions that left behind other possible alternatives. The authors explain that many actors discarded the nation-state as a system conducive to true global equality. For this reason, they tried to build post-imperial communities based on layered or shared sovereignty.
 
This thesis demonstrates the value of imperial history as an instance of reflection for imagining the forms of post-national sovereignty that might emerge in the twenty-first century. Cooper and Burbank add an essential novelty to this contribution: considering the post-imperial as a field of academic scrutiny that goes beyond studies of nationalism. In this respect, they set the tone for historiography, comparative historical sociology and international studies to begin to address certain questions systematically: What post-imperial political orders were imagined as a consequence of the crisis or breakdown of empire; why did the demise of some imperial states give way to scenarios of peace and the collapse of others result in frozen tensions, wars and chronic conflicts; are there 'post-imperial traditions' that establish patterns in the art of dismantling empires; and are there 'post-imperial traditions' that establish patterns in the art of dismantling empires? Such questions, applied to different spatiotemporal contexts, could bear fruit in an interesting interdisciplinary agenda of study that is highly relevant to understanding our present.
 
The Symposium "Postimperial possibilities in the Iberian Pacific and Atlantic Worlds (1808-1898)" departs from the hypothesis that nineteenth-century Hispanic world history has much to contribute to these discussions, especially if we conceptualise the Iberian Monarchies, the Ibero-American republics and the Luso/Spanish states of Asia and Africa as 'ambivalent empires' and 'post-imperial laboratories'. Most of these polities were subject to the informal imperialism of Britain, France and the United States as they sought to bring their state-building projects to success. These were not exclusively national: at times, they projected horizons of supranational organisation, while at others, they resorted to imperial practices such as territorial conquest, gunboat diplomacy, or settler colonialism. The symposium will accept papers that help us understand the ambivalent relationship that nineteenth-century Iberian Pacific and Atlantic Worlds had with imperialism and the experiments of postimperial political organisation that took place in them.

Papers addressing the following issues will be accepted:

•    Post-imperial organisation projects which went beyond the sovereign nation-state: regional confederations (e.g., Gran Colombia, Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation, Americanism, Iberism), constitutional empires (e.g., the I and II empires of Mexico, the Empire of Brazil, the polycentric Spanish Monarchy proposed by Cuban autonomism), protectorates (e.g., Ecuadorian and Montevideo attempts to constitute themselves as protectorates, post-colonial Philippines), etc.

•    The implementation of policies homologous to imperialism by the states of the global Iberian world: territorial conquest, settler colonialism, gunboat diplomacy, and imposition of unequal treaties.

•    The role that the imperialism of other powers—such as France, the United Kingdom, and the United States—played in defining the post-imperial political orders of the global Iberian world.

•    The conflicts to which post-imperial geopolitical dynamics gave rise.

The event is organised in the framework of the Marie Curie Action 101148590 - POST-EMPIRE, Horizon Europe (HORIZON), which the European Commission funds through Grant HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-0.

It is also carried out within the framework of the Fondecyt Project Nº 1240232, “The political culture of post-imperial intervention. Spain and the South American Pacific Republics”, funded by the National Agency for Research and Development of Chile.

Organisers: Grupo de Estudios Asia Pacífico-Dpto. de Historia Internacional y Global (IH-CSIC); Society for Global Nineteenth Century Studies; Laboratorio Geopolítica e Ideología en el Mundo Hispano Global; Centro de Estudios Americanos de la Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez.