New Books Network Luis L. Schenoni, "Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Oct 2, 2025
Luis L. Schenoni, an Associate Professor at UCL and author specializing in 19th-century Latin American history, unpacks how wars shaped state formation in the region. He proposes a compelling 'coercion-extraction cycle' that suggests warfare led to bureaucratic growth and legitimacy struggles. Schenoni challenges anti-bellicist traditions and illustrates why battles matter in state-building. He highlights Latin America's unique role as a testing ground for these theories, sharing intriguing comparisons on warfare intensity and the divergent postwar paths of Argentina and Paraguay.
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War Drives Bureaucratic Growth
- War triggers a coercion-extraction cycle that builds bureaucracies through taxation and conscription.
- Mobilization spurs domestic coercion, tax systems, and expanded military capacity crucial for state formation.
Why Bellicism Was Dismissed
- Anti-bellicist views in Latin American scholarship downplayed war's role due to normative and logical objections.
- Those critiques often misrepresent classical bellicist theory by ignoring 19th-century war-driven state building.
Include Prewar And Postwar Phases
- A complete bellicist account treats war as a process with pre-war, wartime, and post-war phases.
- Outcomes matter: victories consolidate wartime institutions while defeats delegitimize them and weaken state capacity.
