| Summary/Abstract |
Nineteenth-century Latin America saw more extensive innovative thought about international political economy than generally recognized. Far from simply imitating British free-trade doctrine, Latin Americans from that era actively modified it to produce distinctive revolutionary, conservative, and developmental rationales for free trade. Opponents of free trade also generated three varieties of Latin American protectionist thought—developmental protectionism, artisan political economy, and autarchic protectionism—that foreshadowed some aspects of post-1945 Latin American structuralist and dependency thought. These various ideational innovations involved both of dominant British free-trade doctrine as well as adaptation of alternative ideas diffusing from elsewhere (a process that we call alternative localization). They reveal new dimensions of the intellectual agency of actors in peripheral regions in the context of the international diffusion of ideas. They also highlight underappreciated diversity within, and overlap between, the historical international political economy (IPE) schools of economic liberalism and economic nationalism. More generally, recognition of these Latin American contributions helps to widen the historical foundations of IPE in ways that are more inclusive of the voices, experiences, knowledge claims, and contributions of those beyond the core powers.
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