Edward Blumenthal offers an important contribution to the growing body of scholarship on nation-building processes that followed Latin American independence in the early nineteenth century. Organized in six main chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion, his book combines rigorous archival work with theoretical sophistication and provides fresh insights into a relevant period in Latin American history.
Blumenthal explores the role of political exile in nation-state formation in Argentina and Chile from 1810 to 1862. He argues that exile, in its different forms, did not mean the end or absence of political participation by politicians, intellectuals, soldiers, and merchants forced to leave their countries. Rather, they continued their participation in both their home and host countries, in exile sites such as Buenos Aires, Santiago, Lima, Montevideo, and Mendoza. Political migration followed old colonial trade routes—also traveled by merchants, Indigenous peoples, and peons—that crossed former administrative units and that were emerging at...
