This week Al Zambone chats with his colleague Marco Cabrera-Geserick, who is currently in the early stages of a project investigating what Marco calls "republics prior to nations". These were Latin American republics that had brief lives prior to the nation-states that now occupy the same geographical and cultural space. Typically these have been dismissed as "ephemeral republics" of little importance. But Cabrera-Geserick believes that not only are their births and deaths fascinating in and of themselves, their lifespans have much to tell us about the history of other nation-states.