Reading along a Longitudinal Axis: The Case for Trans-Hemispheric American Studies

Historical issues that U.S. and Latin American historians typically cast in national, regional, or even local terms – land-use changes, turbulent political upheavals, waterfront development, indigenous resistance movements, or railroad expansion – acquire greater resolution and richness when also examined from transnational perspectives. Using examples of eco-cultural interactions among Chile, Peru, and the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this paper encourages a diasporic approach to the past, one that focuses on migrations, flows, and connections along the south-north axis of the Americas. It also makes the case for integrating American Studies into wider investigations of the Pacific World.