The project explores the emergence of limited state-nation and stateless spaces in Latin America during the transitional period of 1750-1850 and the semi-colonial period after 1826, and the efforts to develop independent formation in the sense of a western concept of a state by trans-national acting elites whose networks, since the second half of the 18th century increasingly spanned the Americas. Questions to be asked include: how it was that governance in early independent Latin America was justified and enforced; what power instruments were used and which non-governmental actors functioned as Power Brokers; and how were the connections among trans-national actors formed, including the importation of certain conceptions of statehood and governance from the United States?

This project's trans-national dimensions represent an important dimension of “Globality and Locality in trans-national and - continental exchange” in Latin America in the past and present.