The Link That Divides
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- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Publication date:
- 27 February 2026
- 19 March 2026
- ISBN:
- 9781009553315
- 9781009553322
- 9781009553278
- Dimensions:
- (229 x 152 mm)
- Weight & Pages:
- 300 Pages
- Dimensions:
- (229 x 152 mm)
- Weight & Pages:
- 300 Pages
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Book description
This important book illuminates the deeply intertwined histories of the Nicaragua Canal and the Afro-Indigenous Mosquito Coast, uncovering a compelling truth, long overshadowed by the triumphalist narrative of the Panama Canal. Focusing on British and US efforts to control the canal route through Nicaragua, Rajeshwari Dutt shows how imperial ambition, racial ideology, and local power struggles shaped one of Latin America's most contested infrastructure projects. She traces the role of racial language in imperial, colonial, and national agendas; the shifting dynamics of Anglo-American imperialism on the Mosquito Coast; and the violence embedded in the very pursuit of interoceanic connection. Methodologically, the book advances a practice of reading failure as a lens through which to understand the fragility of imperial projects and the contradictions that undermine their global ambitions. At its heart, The Link That Divides reveals a central paradox: that dreams of connection were built on – and undone by – the reality of division and exclusion.
Reviews
‘Rajeshwari Dutt sheds new light on the shift from British to US hegemony in Latin America by revealing how the Afro-Indigenous Mosquito Kingdom shaped the efforts of rival empires to construct an interoceanic canal through Nicaragua. A fascinating and important book.’
Michel Gobat - University of Pittsburgh
‘This exhaustively researched book offers a new understanding of Nicaragua's importance in global struggles over race, empire, and efforts to connect the Atlantic and Pacific in the nineteenth century.’
Aims McGuinness - University of California, Santa Cruz
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