Presentation

This conference on the history of international relations, "The making of international relations from Latin Americas" is above all a space for discussion and exchanges. Aiming to promote, as much as possible, Latin American approaches in dialogue with a global outlook of international relations, we want to bring together scholars specializing in Latin America as well as French researchers specializing in international relations in other areas.

In the last fifty years, the history of international relations has been constantly renewed. Historians are striving to go beyond traditional diplomatic history, questioning central concepts, paying increasing attention to non-state actors and transnational circulations. New paradigms invite us to break with methodological nationalism or regionalism to better integrate Latin America and the Caribbean into the study of contemporary worlds. However, the region is still considered either as a secondary observation site or as an object without real agency, under the prism of the center/periphery dichotomy. Going against these ideas, this conference proposes to consider the Latin Americas - thought as plural and in their diversity - as a privileged space for analyzing the global dynamics of international relations of the 20th and 21st centuries.

This conference will aim to create the conditions for a fruitful exchanges between specialists of the region, French and foreign, and historians of international relations whose subjects of study relate to other geographical areas. By showcasing the diversity of research perspectives stemming from the work on Latin America, the conclusions of this conference should enrich the general historiography of international relations and highlight the cross-fertilization between several historiographical traditions that are too often hermetic.

This meeting will be an opportunity to think about the making of international relations from Latin America, drawing on recent reflections on cultural diplomacy, the global Cold War, student and activist movements, as well as the emergence of new actors or the development of international standards. Starting from the hypothesis that the Latin Americas are transcended by the main dynamics which participate in the construction of the world order since the end of the 19th century until today, these days of exchanges will open a space for discussion around three structuring axes: spaces, practices and objects, and actors and actresses.