The Link That Divides : Race, Empire, and the Quest for the Nicaragua Canal in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge Studies in Us Foreign Relations)

Dutt, Rajeshwari

Cambridge University Press（2026/04発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版／ページ数 264 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781009553278

Full Description

This important book illuminates the deeply intertwined histories of the Nicaragua Canal and the Afro-Indigenous Mosquito Coast, uncovering a compelling truth, long overshadowed by the triumphalist narrative of the Panama Canal. Focusing on British and US efforts to control the canal route through Nicaragua, Rajeshwari Dutt shows how imperial ambition, racial ideology, and local power struggles shaped one of Latin America's most contested infrastructure projects. She traces the role of racial language in imperial, colonial, and national agendas; the shifting dynamics of Anglo-American imperialism on the Mosquito Coast; and the violence embedded in the very pursuit of interoceanic connection. Methodologically, the book advances a practice of reading failure as a lens through which to understand the fragility of imperial projects and the contradictions that undermine their global ambitions. At its heart, The Link That Divides reveals a central paradox: that dreams of connection were built on - and undone by - the reality of division and exclusion.

Contents

Part I: 1. Glimmers of a canal; 2. The British conquest of San Juan del Norte; 3. The consolidation of Greytown: Part II: 4. United States enters the canal contest; 5. The rise and fall of Greytown; 6. Filibustering on the San Juan; Part III: 7. The road to arbitration; 8. Canal dreams and the fate of the Mosquito Reserve; Conclusion: the turn towards Panama.