Contesting US hegemony: Pan-American infrastructure and South American visions of global transportation, 1880s–1890s

This article examines the significance of mobility and transportation infrastructure in the early development of pan-Americanism and the formation of a vision of global transportation in South America in the late nineteenth century. Focusing on the 1880s and 1890s, I explore the connection between transportation and the economic and cultural expansionism of the United States, pan-American debates on intercontinental steamship service and an inter-American railroad, and South American approaches to international transportation, which both included and transcended the Americas. My case study contributes to scholarship on the global history of mobility and transportation by showing how, despite the intention of the United States to establish hemispheric exclusivity and hegemony, transportation became a subject of multilateral cooperation. South American experts and diplomats, I argue, renegotiated and reinterpreted the meaning of pan-American infrastructure, integrating it into a broader vision of global transportation that positioned their countries more prominently in worldwide traffic networks.