I’m truly honored to have been awarded the 2026 Best Article prize by the Diplomatic Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISA) for the article “Seeing the Berlin Conference from the periphery: Latin American reactions to imperialism elsewhere, 1884–85. The piece was published in the Journal of Global History and co-authored with Carsten-Andreas Schulz of Cambridge. The article is available open access. A huge thanks to the committee for taking the time to engage with our work and for selecting us for this honor, and to section president Asaf Siniver of Birmingham University (pictured) for presenting it at the ISA Conference on March 23, 2026. Sadly, Carsten couldn’t make it to the conference in Columbus!
The article explores the role and reaction of Latin America to the infamous Berlin colonial conference of 1884-25. That meeting has been widely studied for its role in fuelling European imperialism and legitimising the scramble for Africa. However, its global impact beyond Europe and Africa has received little attention, with Latin America notably absent. The article examines how prominent diplomats from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico interpreted the proceedings. In their view, Europe’s renewed expansionism in Africa—combining private adventurism, colonisation enterprises, and imperial statecraft—resembled the great powers’ incursions into post-independence Latin America.
These Latin American diplomatics feared that new criteria for staking colonial claims would endanger their states’ sovereignty over vast, remote territories. Yet, while opposing intervention, these diplomats embraced civilizational thinking and state-building projects that echoed Eurocentric racial hierarchies. Their arguments reflected both resistance to imperialism and complicity in its logic. By tracing Berlin’s reverberations across multiple regions, this article highlights the broader repercussions of late nineteenth-century ‘high imperialism’ and reassesses the nature of Latin American anti-imperialism.
Tom Long, PhD 