No Limits to Their Sway tells the story of the ephemeral, independent state of Cartagena, emphasizing “its development into a privateering republic, a polity that welcomed foreign outfitters, officers, and sailors by the hundreds, authorizing them to attack Spanish shipping on its behalf for a share of the prize money” (p. 6). Rethinking the Age of Revolutions from the perspective of a state that was eventually reconquered and obliterated illuminates the multiple contingencies and potential outcomes of a period that many still simplistically interpret as a transition from colony to nations. No Limits to Their Sway thus joins a host of recent studies that compellingly argue for historicizing the Age of Revolutions as a period of open-ended political futures.
Edgardo Pérez Morales takes independent Cartagena seriously as a nascent republic whose authorities were working hard to make it viable in the international sphere. Securing the new state's viability required, among...
