A construção da ordem política como processo de longa duração: estados pós-coloniais e desenvolvimento desigual na América Latina (c.1770-1945)

Abstract

This dissertation intends to rediscuss the historical formation of modern states in Latin America, calling upon a critique of Eurocentrism as platform of conceptual reconstruction. The main argument is that institutional buildup was propelled by the connection between an enlargement of the coercive-extractive cycle and the fiscal opportunities of British world hegemony during the “long XIX century”. During the Age of Revolutions (1770-1840), which stands in the beginning of the cycle, the Iberian empires crisis had broadened the horizon of historical possibilities. During Latin American independencies, the struggle among opposing imaginaries of political order has intertwined with the proliferation of autonomic vindications of provinces, regions and cities. In this context, the link formed between capitalists and state-makers resulted, as a by-product, in a long process of disentanglement of these local spaces, as they became more subordinated to hegemonic liberalism. Hence, the nationalization of political dispute is also a closure in the horizon of possibilities opened during anti-imperial struggles. The dissertation develops three case studies to cast this explanation into particular trajectories. Along the way, it rejects the replication hypothesis, by which Latin American states are considered unit-like cases of the process previously fulfilled in Europe. The theoretical counterposition emphasizes world connections that encompass Europe and Latin America in the same and unequal process of development of the modern interstate system. The critique of Eurocentrism, in this sense, is developed as a conceptual reconstruction that brings to the forefront the imperial dimension of modern politics and unequal development in capitalist world economy.