Blum Fernández, Nicolás (2025) Space, Mobility, and Empires: Marginal People and Everyday Practices in the Northern Río de la Plata Borderlands (1750-1810). [Tesi di dottorato]

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Abstract

This dissertation examines the northern Río de la Plata borderlands during the late eighteenth century as dynamic spaces where imperial ambitions and local practices collided. It explores the process of transformation of the contested spaces into imperial territories. To this end, the focus will be on exploring how Bourbon and Pombaline reforms envisioned agrarian colonies and territorial reorganization to secure contested lands and how these projects often encountered material limitations, complex social dynamics, and the agency of marginal populations and borderlands communities. The central objective is to analyze how imperial discourses and territorialization policies were altered and redefined on the ground by local actors. Rather than passive recipients or opponents of imperial projects, marginal populations developed flexible strategies rooted in mobility, labor fluidity, and informal solidarities. These practices enabled them to appropriate, evade, or negotiate the territorial designs envisioned in Lisbon and Madrid, thereby shaping the structures of borderlands communities from below. Mobility, in particular, emerges as a key element of agency and as a tolerated practice; its persistence reflects not only the limited capacity of imperial authorities to control it but also its utility in defusing social tensions and sustaining borderlands economies. By focusing on the tension between discourse and practice, the study provides a nuanced understanding of how empires operated at their margins and how marginal actors contributed to the making of colonial space. This approach situates the northern Río de la Plata borderlands as dynamic spaces where the ambitions of Iberian monarchies were continuously adapted, contested, and redefined. In addition, it contributes to broader historiographies of empire, frontier-making, and subaltern agency in colonial Latin America, situating the Río de la Plata as a critical site for understanding the fragility and adaptability of imperial projects.

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