Latin American and World Histories: Old and New Approaches to the Pluribus and the Unum Available to Purchase

The rise of world history courses in American universities appears to pose important challenges to Latin American history. Some say that globalization dissolves cultural differences into a sort of transnational convergence. The end of the cold war, others claim, demotes the role of ideology in favor of pragmatic applications of international market verities. The assault on area studies in favor of a universal social science has heightened anxiety among historians and social scientists who labored away in their bounded national or regional modes. As if the pressure on Latin American historians to connect their stories to developments outside the region and to play down idiosyncratic features of the region’s past were not enough, “world” history has become a something of a rage. It is not a fleeting one, and it will have both salutary and possibly unfortunate effects on teaching and research agendas, especially as Americans come to terms (if...