The destruction of tropical forests is an environmental issue of global significance. This process has deep historical roots, with recent scholarship exploring the role of European colonisation and capitalist expansion in driving tropical deforestation from the sixteenth century onwards. Less attention, however, has been given to how Indigenous resistance has impeded deforestation over this time period. Here we analyse how non-state Indigenous groups obstructed Spanish and Portuguese political control and commodity frontiers in tropical South America. Drawing on archival sources, together with Indigenous Guaraní and Paiter Suruí philosophy and oral history, we assess this phenomenon in two biomes, the Atlantic and Amazon Rainforests. The results highlight that over the longue durée, Indigenous resistance has assisted in the conservation of South American tropical forests, acting as a significant—but under-recognised—factor in both regional and global environmental history. This history is of particular importance given the increased recognition of the role of Indigenous peoples in conserving tropical forests as carbon sinks in the twenty-first century.

The Berlin Conference (1884–85) is widely studied for its role in fuelling European imperialism and legitimising the scramble for Africa. However, its global impact beyond Europe and Africa has received little attention, with Latin America notably absent. This article examines how prominent diplomats from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico interpreted the proceedings. In their view, Europe’s renewed expansionism in Africa—combining private adventurism, colonisation enterprises, and imperial statecraft—resembled the great powers’ incursions into post-independence Latin America. They feared that new criteria for staking colonial claims would endanger their states’ sovereignty over vast, remote territories. Yet, while opposing intervention, these diplomats embraced civilisational thinking and state-building projects that echoed Eurocentric racial hierarchies. Their arguments reflected both resistance to imperialism and complicity in its logic. By tracing Berlin’s reverberations across multiple regions, this article highlights the broader repercussions of late nineteenth-century ‘high imperialism’ and reassesses the nature of Latin American anti-imperialism.

This article explores how figurations of children from India changed in the children’s magazine of the Church Missionary Society in connection with its new internationalist ideals. Analysing the content of The Round World, as it was then known, it examines how India and Indian children mattered to the internationalist imaginaries the Church Missionary Society (CMS) was promoting from the 1920s. From the late 1920s, the CMS Young People’s Department and its Education Secretaries fostered ideas of ‘world-friendship’. Against this backdrop, the article explores how children from India not only entered this conversation within the magazine, but were also seen as becoming part of an international Anglican network. Through an unpacking of various categories of narratives, the article argues that this recasting was connected to the political and geographical imaginaries of the interwar years, and explores the closely enmeshed institutional and personal agendas that aided these children’s entry into a ‘world’ of the CMS’s making.

This article examines the pioneering contributions of a generation of women civil servants, diplomats, and intellectuals—referred to as Cepalinas—to economic thought at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) between the late 1960s and early 1980s. These women experts, including statisticians, economists, sociologists, and demographers, played a critical role in reshaping CEPAL’s development agenda by advocating for the integration of gender perspectives into regional policies. Through extensive fieldwork and data collection, they highlighted the economic and social contributions of women, particularly those from marginalised communities, and challenged the prevailing male-dominated models of development. Despite the progress made following the 1975 UN International Conference on Women, the Cepalinas often remained on the periphery of institutional power and have been largely overlooked in the historiography. This article brings their work to the forefront, analysing their publications and mission reports to reveal how their efforts transformed both the Commission’s economic frameworks and broader global development policies.

In 1974, the International Species Information System (ISIS) was launched as a computerised database for zoo animals. Developed by a small group in Minneapolis, ISIS is now used by over 1,300 zoos on five continents and recognised as a crucial tool for ex situ conservation. The founders aimed to transform long-standing global patterns of zoo animal management. Rather than places where wild-caught animals went to die, they envisioned zoos as interconnected hubs supporting the global breeding and survival of endangered species. This article examines how the ‘infrastructural globalism’ of ISIS took shape. At first sight, the system appears to be a universal instrument for collecting neutral data. Yet, using the lens of ‘infrastructural inversion’ and examining the legal, socio-political, and scientific contexts in which it was developed, the article highlights how locally rooted ambitions and global competitions shaped its design and operation. Despite its aura of global reach, the effectiveness of ISIS relied on continuous local human effort, which explains its limitations. On a broader level, the history of ISIS reminds us that the influence of infrastructural globalism extends to non-human animals, and the ways they move around the world.