Introduction: Histories of Solitude

This introduction discusses the conceptual and historiographical framework needed to locate the histories of Colombia as an illustration of the histories of democracy across the world. It questions the tropes of failure, lack, and deficiency and instead invites scholars and students to engage with interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches to narrate the histories of Colombia as struggles of power and domination over the meanings and practices of democracy, from the early nineteenth century to the last quarter of the twentieth century. The introduction also argues that an intergenerational dialogue is necessary to draw connections between the histories of Colombia and Latin America and explains the ways in which this volume marks out an exciting research agenda for the historians of the region’s modern past.