This chapter examines some distinctive ideas about economic regionalism that emerged during the interwar years and the early 1940s. Some arose in the context of Japanese debates about a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity, of which the most sophisticated was Akamatsu Kaname’s “Wild Geese Flying Pattern theory” of regional economic integration. Others were associated with post-1933 German designs for Europe’s economy, including “Schachtian” managed bilateralism (Hjalmar Schacht), fascist multilateralism (Walter Funk), and visions of a “great-space economy” (Friedrich Zimmermann). The final example comes from Peru’s Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre who advanced a quite different anti-imperialist vision of regionalism initially through what he called “Indoamerican economic nationalism” within Latin America and then via a wider vision of “democratic Interamericanism without empire” that was inclusive of the United States.

Latin Americanism was a topic of intense intellectual scrutiny and political and social activism at the turn of the twentieth century. The rise of the United States as a global power triggered a wide range of debates on the idea present and future of Latin America as an integrated historical and cultural entity. By exploring the work of José Martí and José E. Rodó, who imagined Latin Americanism within the limits of the pedagogical sphere, as well as contributions of Manuel Ugarte and the leaders of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), who attempted to transform it into a militant movement connected to politics on the streets, this chapter shows both the possibilities and limitations of a university-based reformist project in constant search of expanding its social bases and institutional support. Issues of gender bias, language dominance, and ethnic hierarchies are at the center of this discussion about the challenges that Latin Americanism has faced over time.