Ori Preuss has written a provocative intellectual history focused on redefinitions of Brazil's national self-image in the context of its changing views of the Spanish American republics. The phrase ‘Bridging the Island’ metaphorically expresses the book's thesis. Independent Brazil regarded itself as radically different from its South American neighbours. Unlike them, it had long been ruled by an emperor whose royal court was in Rio de Janeiro, rather than in Europe. It made a largely peaceful transition to independence, and then maintained a stable political system, free from the bloody uprisings, coups and dictatorships that characterised political life in the Spanish American republics during the age of the caudillos. And, Brazil abolished slavery far later than its Spanish neighbours.

Informed by discussions of significant events in Brazil, Spanish America, Europe and the United States, Preuss details a process through which Brazilians redefined their nation's identity, moving from a sense of exceptionalism to a more inclusive identity that emphasised commonalities with Spanish America. This contributed to the emergence of a broader regional identity – the idea of Latin America. Preuss suggests that the Paraguayan War (1864–70), which saw Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay emerge victorious, altered Brazilian perceptions of those nations. They, along with Chile, came to be seen as principled and progressive.

The 1898 Spanish–American War underscored Spain's decline and heightened concerns about the US's rising power and its aggressive, materialistic civilisation. Pan-Americanism, which began in 1899–90 with a conference in the United States, gave rise to the Pan-American Union. The next international conference took place in Mexico in 1901–2, but subsequent meetings occurred in 1906, 1910 and 1923, hosted by Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Along with exchanges of presidential visits among the former Triple Alliance allies, these contributed to the change in Brazil's sense of itself and its proximate neighbours. In a reciprocal process, Latin American countries began to see themselves as ‘civilised nations’, a term of great resonance at the time. Latin America nations, says Preuss, began to redefine themselves as members of a larger community. The existence of these ‘bridges’ prompted further reconceptualising of similarities and differences.

This was not a unilinear process, nor did it result in a shared hegemonic idea of Latin America. Rather, it took the form of a highly nuanced and lengthy courtship that moved in fits and starts, marked by ‘transnational gazes and dialogues regarding national and regional identities’ (p. 23). Hence, while detailing how the ‘island’ was ‘bridged’, the book's concluding chapters focus on ‘close encounters of the peripheral kind’ and a Brazil that in many respects continued to see itself as exceptional, but retained ‘bridges’ to Spanish America.

The author's argument rests mainly on close readings of the published works and correspondence of five Brazilian intellectuals: Quintino Bocaiuva, Joaquim Nabuco, the Baron of Rio Branco (José Maria de Silva Paranhos Jr.,), Rui Barbosa Eduardo Prado and Oliveira Lima. These men, whose lives bridged the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, formed part of a small elite that was connected through ties of family, education and wealth. They exemplified the ‘writer-statesmen’ intellectuals who played important roles in the political affairs of their nations, a pattern common in Brazil and Spanish America (pp. 23–4).

Eduardo Prado used the metaphor of Brazil as an island in his book A ilusão americana (The American Illusion), published in 1893, which soundly criticised the United States. He had harsh words for some of the Spanish American republics, but nonetheless found a few positive qualities, ones he viewed as being ‘very Brazilian’ (p. 44). The Spanish–American War caused Rui Barbosa to see the United States negatively and, like Prado, to identify commonalities between Brazil and the Spanish American republics. Preuss identifies this as beginning ‘the final stage in the evolution of Brazilian elite views of Spanish America’ (p. 182). While Brazil continued to see itself as exceptional, it also acknowledged a degree of kinship with Spanish America.

Growing formal and informal interactions between Brazil and Spanish America – ‘close encounters of the peripheral kind’ – multiplied opportunities for reflections by Brazilian writer-statesmen on both the Spanish American ‘Other’ and their own nation. At the 1906 Pan-American Conference, Oliveira Lima, speaking of the United States and the Spanish American republics, affirmed Brazil's kinship to the latter, ‘bound by bonds of blood, economy, and civilization’ (p. 172).

While Preuss ably contextualises his thesis in the lives and works of these leading intellectuals, he might have embedded it in a fuller portrait of that era. Thomas E. Skidmore, in Five Centuries of Change (Oxford University Press, 2009), identifies the years from 1870 to 1910 as a time of ‘Making Brazil Modern’, and discusses the attempt to both sell and whiten Brazil, which, although largely directed to Europe and the United States, also included other nations in Latin America. As well, Preuss stresses Brazil's sense of common identity with the Spanish American republics, but most of that discussion centres on Argentina and Chile, prosperous nations that represented themselves as white and civilised.

A broad gloss marks the author's suggestion that ‘independence took place against a background of shared historical experience and a high level of cultural, linguistic, and religious uniformity’ (p. 21). The divergent resources and colonial philosophies of Portugal and Spain, diversity in the New World's pre-colonial populations in terms of size, material development and exploitable resources, and varying degrees of success in creating stable governments belie that assertion.

Notwithstanding those concerns, Bridging the Island is a lively, engaging and challenging discussion of national and regional identifies, and the processes through which difference and similarities are formed at a national level. It provides an innovative perspective on the formation of Brazil's national identity, highlighting a process through which the country redefined itself, its Spanish American neighbours and its place and role in the western hemisphere. Nuanced and at times contradictory, the book reflects the mix of continuity, change and contradictions common to processes of redefinition.