Imperial expansion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been largely studied as a military and economic phenomenon. According to the widely accepted narrative, European empires expanded their power across the world following different ‘formal’ (direct) and ‘informal’ (indirect) strategies. This article argues that, beyond material forms of conquest and effective domination, empires also implemented their rule through the use of immateriality. We explore this phenomenon through a transnational and diachronic comparison of the cases of France in the 1860s and Spain in the 1920s. Both examples suggest that such notions as ‘civilization’, ‘race’, ‘spirit’, and ‘greatness’ not only underpinned the imaginary and the conceptualization of empire, but also actively produced powerful ‘immaterial’ means of domination, expansion, and influence. This work’s methodological approach relies on the conviction that concepts and significations are an integral part of politics. France and Spain did not have empires in Latin America in the periods under study, but they were imagined as being imperial powers in the Americas. This crafted an imperial mind-set that complemented the formal and informal imperial practices that France in the 1860s and Spain in the 1920s were undertaking in other parts of the world. We focus on intellectual and political projects and on practices of cultural diplomacy as two manifestations of these immaterial empires. By virtue of these projects and policies, French and Spanish leaders managed to create an image of France and Spain as deserving their ‘natural’ important place in the global scene. Immateriality served as an instrument to counterbalance the growth of competing powers, namely the United States, which, in the 1860s as well as the 1920s, was seen as a dangerous competitor in the so-called Western hemisphere. In this way, notions of Latinity and Hispanity competed with each other and, at the same time, targeted the ‘Anglo-Saxon’, ‘racial’, and ‘spiritual’ competitor.

中文翻译：

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无形帝国：美洲的法国和西班牙，1860 年代和 1920 年代

19 世纪和 20 世纪的帝国扩张在很大程度上被研究为一种军事和经济现象。根据广为接受的叙述，欧洲帝国通过不同的“正式”（直接）和“非正式”（间接）战略在世界范围内扩展其权力。本文认为，除了征服和有效统治的物质形式之外，帝国还通过使用非物质来实施他们的统治。我们通过对 1860 年代法国和 1920 年代西班牙案例的跨国和历时比较来探索这一现象。这两个例子都表明，“文明”、“种族”、“精神”和“伟大”等概念不仅支撑了帝国的想象和概念化，而且积极地产生了强大的统治、扩张和影响的“非物质”手段。 . 这项工作的方法论方法依赖于这样一种信念，即概念和意义是政治的一个组成部分。在所研究的时期，法国和西班牙在拉丁美洲没有帝国，但它们被认为是美洲的帝国强国。这塑造了一种帝国心态，补充了 1860 年代的法国和 1920 年代的西班牙在世界其他地区所采用的正式和非正式的帝国做法。我们专注于作为这些非物质帝国的两种表现形式的智力和政治项目以及文化外交实践。凭借这些项目和政策，法国和西班牙领导人成功地塑造了法国和西班牙在全球舞台上享有“自然”重要地位的形象。非物质性作为一种工具来抵消竞争大国的增长，即美国，在 1860 年代和 1920 年代，美国被视为所谓的西半球的危险竞争者。通过这种方式，拉丁裔和西班牙裔的概念相互竞争，同时针对“盎格鲁撒克逊”、“种族”和“精神”竞争者。