Transnational South America, reviewed by Nicola Miller, Journal of Latin American Studies (original) (raw)

Ori Preuss's book is unusual in three respects. It explores transnationalism between countries in Latin America, rather than between Latin American countries and external powers. It brings together the history of foreign relations with history of culture and ideas. It offers evidence that the histories of Brazil and Spanish America were more entangled than is commonly claimed. Preuss builds on his earlier book, Bridging the Island (Iberoamericana, 2011), which analysed how Brazil's self-fashioning as a republic was affected by how it imagined Spanish America. Yet Transnational South America is a far more ambitious endeavour, going beyond the study of identity to tackle some difficult questions about how culture shapes the possibilities for socioeconomic relations between countries. To approach the issue, he focuses on interactions between Brazil and Argentina, or more specifically the nexus of southern Brazil and the River Plate, which underwent rapid economic growth and social change during the late nineteenth century, at least in the cities, to become one of the most modernised areas in the Americas.