Hemisphere, Region, and Nation

Abstract

In an essay on the origins of the Western Hemisphere idea, Arthur Whitaker proposed that the Americas were united by a special relationship—“a large cluster of related ideas”—whose similarity was defined in opposition to Europe.¹ This special relationship was based on the belief that the American nations shared an historical experience substantially different from that of Western Europe. Paradoxically, the idea of a continent apart was European in origin. At first, America appeared as a “New World” to the extent that it was a newly discovered continental mass, whose parts were deemed congruent and similar. The intellectual, commercial, and political revolutions of the eighteenth century deepened the separation America/Europe until this tension became antithetical. From these radical transformations emerged a quite parochial form of nationalism—a sort of creole patriotism—that advocated belonging to Virginia, the River Plate, New Granada, or Peru. Only later, during the struggle for independence, Americans from north, center, and south started to develop an incipient sense of continental belonging and solidarity. Facing the menace of a monarchical Europe determined to recolonize the Americas, North and South Americans started to call themselves “Americans/Americanos,” and to consider their struggles part of a continental movement.

“The core of the Western Hemisphere idea is the proposition that the peoples of the Western Hemisphere are united in a special relationship to one another that sets them apart from the rest of the world; above all, apart from Europe. Around this core there gathered at an early date a large cluster of related ideas, social and cultural, as well as politico-geographical, and mystical as well as rational.” Arthur P. Whitaker, The Western Hemisphere Idea: Its Rise and Decline

—(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1954), 323.