The Link That Divides: Race, Empire, and the Quest for the Nicaragua Canal in the Nineteenth Century

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Rajeshwari Dutt (Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi)

The Link That Divides

Name: The Link That Divides
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ISBN: 9781009553278

Race, Empire, and the Quest for the Nicaragua Canal in the Nineteenth Century

Rajeshwari Dutt (Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi)

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Paperback

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English

Cambridge University Press
19 March 2026

History of the Americas; Maritime history; Diplomacy; Geopolitics; Property law

Series: Cambridge Studies in US Foreign Relations

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.

By: Rajeshwari Dutt (Indian Institute of Technology Mandi)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
ISBN: 9781009553278
ISBN 10: 1009553275
Series: Cambridge Studies in US Foreign Relations
Pages: 300
Publication Date: 19 March 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Rajeshwari Dutt is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi. She is the author of Maya Caciques in Early National Yucatán (2017) and Empire on Edge: The British Struggle for Order in Belize during Yucatán's Caste War, 1847–1901 (2020).

Reviews for The Link That Divides: Race, Empire, and the Quest for the Nicaragua Canal in the Nineteenth Century

'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