Recasting the Nation in Twentieth-Century Argentina

Recasting the Nation in Twentieth-Century Argentina tackles the meaning of ＂the nation＂ by looking to the geographical, ideological, and political peripheries of society.

What it means to be Argentine has long consumed writers, political leaders, and many others. For almost two centuries prominent figures have defined national values while looking out from the urban centers of the country and above all Buenos Aires. They have described the nation in terms of urban experience and, secondarily, by surrounding frontiers; they have focused on the country’s European heritage and advanced an entangled vision of race and space. The chapters in this book take a dynamic new approach. While scholars and political leaders have routinely ignored the country’s many peripheries, the Argentine nation cannot be reasonably understood without them. Those on the margins also defined core tenets of the nation.

This volume will be vital reading for those interested in how Latin American societies emerged over the past two centuries and for those curious about how ideas outside of the mainstream come to define national identities.

Benjamin Bryce is Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of The Boundaries of Ethnicity: German Immigration and the Language of Belonging in Ontario (2022) and To Belong in Buenos Aires: Germans, Argentines, and the Rise of a Pluralist Society (2018).

David M.K. Sheinin is Professor of History at Trent University and Académico Correspondiente of the Academia Nacional de la Historia de la República Argentina. His most recent book is The New Pan-Americanism and the Structuring of Inter-American Relations (2022).