The tragedy of Americanist diplomacy: Pan-American networks and the consolidation of empire, 1910–1917

Abstract

This article investigates the construction of Pan-American knowledge networks in the years before the U.S. declaration of war against Germany in 1917. As the United States expanded its economic and political presence in the Americas, South Americans undertook an extensive effort to “network” the North, hoping to create new models of continental multilateralism. This effort was rooted in both interests (the promotion of increased U.S. investment) and ideas (the adaptation by South Americans of the narrative of “American” exceptionalism). Hopes for continental multilateralism were dashed by the Wilson administration’s decision to turn its attention to Europe. Yet the networks created in the war years were central both to the consolidation of U.S. empire as well as to increasing Latin American challenges to emergent international organizations in the 1920s and 1930s.