A New World of Revolutions

 A New World of Revolutions: Popular Imaginations and Movements Across the Americas (Princeton University Press) reconstructs the histories, politics, and legacies of the Age of Revolutions (c. 1770–1850) from the vantage point of popular movements in the Americas. Challenging narratives that center the nation-state, the book emphasizes the hemispheric politics, practices, and cultural production that connected revolutionary movements from the United States to Argentina. My analysis draws on marching songs, poems, pamphlets, manifestos, plays, proclamations, constitutions, and other archival objects to show that hemispheric imaginaries were critical to the development of postcolonial republicanism in the Americas.The book also shows that marginalized groups, especially Indigenous, Mestizo, and Pardo communities, contributed to and benefitted from narratives of American emancipation. Armed with hemispheric discourses, they were able to argue for such egalitarian reforms as the abolition of slavery, the elimination of colonial tribute, the protection of Indigenous lands, the end of the Spanish caste system, and the establishment of civic equality. Countering assumptions that actors in popular movements followed elite leaders or had little to say during moments of revolutionary change, I show how each of these campaigns influenced republican principles in ways that reflected their own cultures and histories—and how each produced concrete interventions in the legal, social, and material realities of their communities. A New World of Revolutions links popular movements in New Spain (Mexico), the United States, New Granada (Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and Ecuador), and the postcolonial Andes (Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina), arguing that, together, they constituted an American tradition of resistance against European rule.​