Aquí como allá: Colombian transnational identities, the Spanish Civil War and its legacies

Eaton, Charlotte (2024) Aquí como allá: Colombian transnational identities, the Spanish Civil War and its legacies. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

This thesis aims to globalise Colombia’s early twentieth-century history by offering a transnational account of how local interactions with the Spanish Civil War and its legacies impacted the country’s nation-building process in the 1930s and 1940s. Colombia was undergoing what has been described as its first foray into modernisation when fighting erupted across the Atlantic. There was intense interest in Spain amongst large swathes of Colombian society and across the political spectrum. However, the perceived parallels between the two nation’s contemporary politics as well as the weight of their historic ties, ensured that many Colombians also understood their own national and international aspirations through the prism of Spanish events. These groups and individuals then imported ideas, rhetoric and even people from Spain to construct multiple and competing visions of Colombia’s future. In response, the Liberal government reformulated a nineteenth century narrative of Colombian insularity into one of Colombian exceptionalism which they used to claim that their nation-building project was free from any foreign influence and therefore downplay the significance of the Spanish Civil War. The myth of Colombian exceptionalism has long shaped how historians understand the country’s 1930s and early 1940s. This thesis aims to change the narrative by uncovering the diverse ways in which a broad range of Colombians interpreted Spanish events; interacted with news, ideas and people from the peninsula; and applied these multiple understandings to their local, national and regional contexts from 1936 to 1945. Drawing on research in four countries across nineteen archives and five oral histories, it argues that the history of early twentieth-century Colombian nation-building cannot be understood without reference to developments outside the country’s borders. In turn, using the Spanish Civil War as a lens to examine Colombian politics and society during this period reveals a greater plurality than has hitherto been recognised.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2024 Charlotte Eaton
Library of Congress subject classification:	D History General and Old World > DP Spain F History United States, Canada, Latin America > F1201 Latin America (General) J Political Science > JC Political theory
Sets:	Departments > International History
Supervisor:	Harmer, Tanya
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4816

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