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University of California Press

Beyond Patriotic Phobias

Connections, Cooperation, and Solidarity in the Peruvian-Chilean Pacific World

by Joshua Savala (Author)
Price: $34.95 / £30.00
Publication Date: Jun 2022
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 248
ISBN: 9780520385894
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 12 b/w figures, 5 tables

About the Book

The War of the Pacific (1879–1883) looms large in the history of Peru and Chile. Upending the prevailing historiographical focus on the history of conflict, Beyond Patriotic Phobias explores points of connection shared between Peruvians and Chileans despite war. Through careful archival work, historian Joshua Savala highlights the overlooked cooperative relationships of workers across borders, including maritime port workers, doctors, and the police. These groups, in both countries, were intimately tied together through different forms of labor: they worked the ships and ports, studied and treated disease transmission in the face of a cholera outbreak, and conducted surveillance over port and maritime activities because of perceived threats like transnational crime and labor organizing. By following the movement of people, diseases, and ideas, Savala reconstructs the circulation that created a South American Pacific world. The resulting story is one in which communities, classes, and states formed transnationally through varied, if uneven, forms of cooperation.

About the Author

Joshua Savala is Assistant Professor of Latin American History at Rollins College.

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Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction 

1 • A South American Pacific
2 • Gender and Sexuality in the Pacific
3 • Transnational Cholera
4 • Comparisons and Connections in Pacific Anarchism
5 • Pacific Policing 
Epilogue: Of Parallels 

Notes 
Bibliography 
Index 

Reviews

"Josh Savala’s succinct and snappy monograph deftly counters the dominant tendency among both popular commentators and scholars to start investigations of Chilean–Peruvian historical relations from the premise of conflict. . . . Beyond Patriotic Phobias shows us how even within a context of military and territorial conflict we find many stories of transnational collaboration, friendship and commonality."
Journal of Latin American Studies
"The book is exemplary in terms of how the new turn to transitional history can be transposed to eras that have been defined more hermetically in the past. It fleshes out the Chilean–Peruvian relationship, thereby modifying the traditional paradigm."
International Affairs
"Beyond Patriotic Phobias is a welcome addition to the scholarship dealing with Peruvian-Chilean international relations."
Hispanic American Historical Review
"This is the rare book that is deeply researched but also compact and accessible. It is written in dialogue with global and local literatures, from Peruvian and Chilean national and regional historiographies to scholarship on anarchism, oceans, and state-formation, but it doesn’t indulge in overly long theorizations."
The Americas
"Beyond Patriotic Phobias is an original study and fascinating read that scholars and students of many historical subdisciplines surely will find valuable."
International Journal of Maritime History
"Beyond Patriotic Phobias turns on its head how scholars, journalists, and politicians represent relations between Peru and Chile. Joshua Savala contests this dominant view that highlights tensions and conflicts, instead showing how workers and common people forged diverse forms of solidarity. This is stirring and innovative social and transnational history and a major contribution to the study of class, nationalism, and the Pacific world."–– Charles Walker, Professor of History, University of California, Davis

"Based on impressive archival research, this book takes a bold and refreshing approach to the history of nineteenth-century Chile and Peru by exploring dynamics of connection, cooperation, and solidarity—rather than conflict—in the maritime worlds that linked ports and workers."—Heidi Tinsman, Professor of History, University of California, Irvine

"In this engaging labor history of the South American Pacific Ocean, Savala challenges traditional accounts that have emphasized conflict and nationalism during the War of the Pacific. Instead, he uncovers a fascinating history of the many encounters, exchanges, and solidarities that defined the lives of Chileans and Peruvians working and moving across transnational waters and ports."—Ángela Vergara, author of Fighting Unemployment in Twentieth-Century Chile

 

Awards

  • Southern Cone Studies Section Social Science Award Honorable Mention 2023 2023, LASA Southern Cone Studies Section
  • Flora Tristán Award Honorable Mention 2023 2023, Peru Section, Latin American Studies Association