Colombia’s Continental Contributions: Competing Hemispheric Divides in Nineteenth-Century America

This chapter examines two junctures that complicate the familiar image of Colombia as a parochial nation: the 1826 American Assembly and the 1850s debates around Panama's interoceanic railroad. In 1826, Colombia spearheaded an alliance to counterbalance the continental European efforts to restore monarchy in America, understood as the hempishere, not as the United States country. Beyond naive idealism or the failure of the union, the American Assembly reveals a persistent form of hemispheric political imagination in early nineteenth century: an independent, republican, and “new” America in contrast to “old” and despotic Europe. By mid-century, a novel form of hemispheric imagination would upset this early sensibility. Deep-seated concerns regarding the expanding presence of the United States in the region compelled officers from the Republic of New Granada to encourage European presence, and even to launch active attempts to license for England or France the exploitation of the Panama interoceanic zone. The debates around the railroad would reveal a disjointed hemisphere with Neogranadian representatives claiming for European presence against “Yankee conquest.” These changing forms of political imagination, the chapter contends, are crucial to understand intertwined processes of both nation building and continent making.