AbstractThis paper deploys an Andean case to suggest that Latin America's nineteenth‐century histories may usefully intervene in contemporary discussions of colonialism and the postcolonial. Such an intervention potentially pluralizes the ‘abstract singularity’ or ‘universal historicism’ of much contemporary postcolonial discourse produced from diasporic‐metropolitan, South Asianist. and Africanist perspectives. The proposed move also brings history, particularly history thought from the predicament or location of subaltern Latin America, to the center of post‐universal discussions that link postcolonialities to subaltern(ist)