Bringing War Back In
Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

Examines how the outcome of wars in the distant past have shaped the modern Latin American states of today.

Luis L. Schenoni (Author)

9781009442138, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 November 2024

326 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.5 cm, 0.63 kg

'Schenoni's work … offers the reader a journey through literatures from different times and even disciplines to shed light on the impact of war outcomes on state capacity, which will surely influence future work in the field.' Nicole Jenne, Journal of Latin American Studies

Bringing War Back In provides a fresh theory connecting war and state formation that incorporates the contingency of warfare and the effects of war outcomes in the long run. The book demonstrates that international wars in nineteenth-century Latin America triggered state-building, that the outcomes of those wars affected the legitimacy and continuity of such efforts, and that the relative capacity of states in this region today continues to reflect those distant processes. Combining comparative historical analysis with cutting edge social science methods, the book provides a comprehensive picture of state formation in nineteenth-century Latin America that is compelling for readers across disciplines, breathes new life into bellicist approaches to state formation, and offers a novel framework to explain variation in state capacity across Latin America and the world.

Preface
Part I. Puzzle and Argument: 1. Overview
2. Classical Bellicist Theory
3. Blood and Debt in Europe and Latin America
Part II. Regionwide Analyses: 4. Preparation for War and Mobilization
5. War Outcomes and State Building
6. The State Capacity Ranking c.1900
Part III. Case Studies: 7. War and State in the River Plate
8. War and State in the Pacific
9. War and State in Mexico and Central America
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB]