Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Consulates, according to historian Ferry de Goey, are the chief institutions of global capitalism, yet they are absent from current discussions of globalization. This lacuna has generated many misperceptions about the global flows of people, capital, institutions, and ideas. The neglect of consuls in public discourse has effectively “nationalized” debates about immigration control and economic policy. By bringing consuls back in, by looking at nation-states from the perspective of consular offices, and by shedding more light on the forgotten history of consular institutions, this paper makes several important interventions in current debates on globalization. Specifically, I address two important questions: What are the dangers of leaving consulates outside contemporary discussions of globalization? And how can extra-territorial institutions help us rethink (and re-imagine) national debates about globalization? I argue that an emphasis on consulates – rather than, for example, entrepreneurs or national governments – suggests a different narrative of globalization. By analyzing evidence from American, French, British, and Spanish consulates at the turn of the nineteenth century – the birth of the modern world – I argue that globalization was an institutional process shaped by peripheral Atlantic bureaucrats. I stress that such things as passports, customs declarations, and consular certificates provided radically new ways of conceptualizing an emerging global political economy of capitalism. They also testified to the global reach of the nation-state. Clashes between nation-states about means of identification, about discriminatory tariffs, and about the surveillance of foreign migrants, unleashed a series of military confrontations that shaped the modern international system.