New Books in Political Science 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 University College London and expert on Latin American political history, dives into how wars shaped state formation in 19th-century Latin America. He discusses the coercion-extraction cycle, illustrating how taxation and conscription strengthened bureaucratic capacity. Schenoni critiques the anti-Bellicist tradition and presents a nuanced view of how individual battles influenced legitimacy and tax morale. He draws compelling comparisons between Argentina's rise and Paraguay's collapse, revealing the profound long-term impacts of warfare on state development.
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Why War Was Written Out Of Latin American History
- Latin American scholarship largely dismissed bellicist theory by focusing on 20th-century peace and institutional critiques.
- Re-centering the 19th century reveals wars then align with Tilly-style state-building dynamics.
The Coercion–Extraction Mechanism
- Wars trigger a coercion-extraction cycle: taxation, conscription, and bureaucratic growth feed each other.
- That cycle produces both state capacity and domestic repression when societies resist extraction.
War Has A Beginning, Middle, And Long Aftermath
- Treat wars as stages: pre-war mobilization, battlefield contingency, and post-war settlement each shape state outcomes.
- Outcomes, especially victory or defeat, determine whether wartime institutions consolidate or unravel.
