Exile and Nation-State Formation in Argentina and Chile, 1810–1862, 1st ed. 2019
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.

1. Introduction: The Floating Province of Exile.- 2. Political Displacement and Independence: Commerce, Indigenous Peoples and Exile (1810–1839).- 3. Epistolary Exchange and the Exile Experience: Transnational Networks before the Nation.- 4. Political Exile, Labor Markets and Institution Building.- 5. The Practice and Politics of Exile: Nation-State Formation from Abroad.- 6. Exile Representations of Chilean Exceptionalism.- 7. Narratives of Exile, Narratives of Nationhood.- 8. Floating Provinces: Exile and the Formation of Independent Republics.

Edward Blumenthal is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, France.

Analyzes the role of exile in state and nation formation in nineteenth-century Latin America, focusing on Chile and the Río de la Plata Contextualizes the political thought of a group of important political and cultural figures from Chile and Argentina by studying them as émigrés Examines nation building in Latin America after independence through the lens of transnational processes of exile and migration