Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network - New Books in Political Science
Episode: Luis L. Schenoni, "Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Date: October 2, 2025
Host: Sebastian Rojas Caval
Guest: Luis L. Schenoni, Associate Professor at University College London (UCL)

Episode Overview

This episode explores Luis Schenoni's forthcoming book, Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Schenoni and host Sebastian Rojas Caval discuss the book’s central argument: that international wars in 19th-century Latin America were pivotal in shaping the trajectories of state-building—echoing Charles Tilly’s “war made the state and the state made war,” but challenging long-dominant “anti-bellicist” perspectives in Latin American scholarship. The conversation weaves theory, data, and history to recast Latin America as an essential laboratory for understanding war-driven state formation.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Origins of the Project and Theoretical Foundations

• Genesis of the Book

  • Schenoni’s interest began during a graduate course on state formation (03:41), noting Tilly’s theory worked for many regions—except Latin America. He saw an opportunity to interrogate this apparent exception based on his Argentine background.
    • “This theory seemed to work everywhere but in Latin America...maybe there is a dissertation here.” (03:26, Schenoni)

• How War Makes States (Tilly’s Theory)

  • Central to Tilly’s model is the “coercion-extraction cycle” (03:57), where states extract resources and conscript soldiers to wage wars, building bureaucracies for both tasks. This process triggers pushback and necessitates domestic coercive apparatuses, fueling state development:
    • “All of that extraction requires the building of bureaucracies, and all of that extraction at the same time will generate reactions from your local population...” (04:21, Schenoni)

"Anti-Bellicist" Tradition in Latin America

• Why War Was ‘Taken Out’ of Latin American State-Building Scholarship

  • The prevailing consensus, led by scholars like Miguel Centeno (“Blood and Debt”), was that Latin America experienced fewer or less intense wars—especially in the 20th century—than Europe, and thus Tilly’s war-state thesis was inapplicable (05:59).
  • Schenoni pushes back, noting that actual state-building was recognized by historians as a 19th-century phenomenon, contemporaneous with frequent warfare (08:04):
    • “I realized that this...discarding of Bellis’s theory wasn’t paying too much attention to this correlation between wars being far more prominent in the 19th century and our state building taking place in that era.” (07:16, Schenoni)

• Multiple Underpinnings of Anti-Bellicism

  • Normative: Discomfort with the idea that positive social outcomes relied on war (09:11).
  • Logical: Belief that Tilly’s model only applies where state death/elimination is common (11:47).
  • Empirical: Emphasis on colonialism and economic structures (e.g. Acemoglu-Robinson) as central to state weakness, sidelining war.

Expanding & Refining Bellicist Theories

• Granularity: War Before, During, and After

  • Schenoni introduces analytical distinctions: pre-war (rivalry, build-up), war (fighting, mobilization), and post-war (settlements and their effects), emphasizing that how wars end—victory or defeat—creates long-term state trajectories (15:00):
    • “All wars kind of begin somewhere and then take place and they end in some way and they have some effects after they have passed.” (15:00, Schenoni)
    • Victories often solidify gains in state capacity; defeats can dismantle bureaucracies, tax morale, and legitimacy.

• Centrality of Battles & Contingency

  • Individual battles act as critical, contingent events with outsized effects on domestic legitimacy, extraction, and elite dynamics (20:00):
    • “Battles are moments also where the state is tested and...outcomes will definitely affect this domestic process that we were describing.” (20:34, Schenoni)
    • Host Sebastian: “Battles are not like soccer, where if you're playing against Brazil, you know you're going to lose, but you have to play anyway.” (22:03, Sebastian)

• Elite Dynamics

  • The state-building process often hinges on struggles between centralizing elites (pro-state) and peripheral elites (anti-state), shaped by the pressures and aftermath of war (24:51).

Why Latin America is the Ideal ‘Laboratory’

• No State Death—So the Effects of War Persist and Are Observable

  • Unlike Europe, where defeated states often disappeared (creating selection bias), Latin American states survived both victory and defeat, allowing for long-term postwar analysis:
    • “Latin America is an ideal laboratory in this sense because no state dies.” (30:28, Schenoni)

• Empirical Refutation: Latin America’s 19th-Century Wars Were Intense

  • Host Sebastian highlights statistics: Europe saw 11 interstate wars in the 19th century; Latin America had 17. War deaths per population were higher in Latin America (4%) than in Europe (0.56%) (31:11-32:02).
    • “...the proportion of the population that mobilizes [in small Latin American countries] is higher than the Napoleonic France...” (32:48, Schenoni)

Extraction, Taxation, and Rebellion

• Contrary to anti-bellicist claims, 19th-century Latin American states did raise revenue from local taxation and inflationary policies (rather than external sources) to fund wars (33:44).
  • “Wars were paid fundamentally by local taxes and inflation more than by these foreign sources of revenue...” (37:06, Schenoni)
  • Preparation and prosecution of war correlated with rises in domestic taxation and inflation, and with spikes in rebellions and coups (37:01).

Case Studies: Argentina/Paraguay and Others

• Paraguay: Built a strong, centralized, autarkic state under Francia and the López dynasty, renowned for early passports, strong state industry, and borders. However, its defeat in the War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870) led to population loss, political instability, decimation of state capacity, and prolonged underdevelopment (39:39-50:14).

• Argentina: Initially fragmented, losing the early 19th-century war to Brazil contributed to state collapse and decades of civil conflict. Mobilization and ultimate victory in the Paraguayan War enabled state consolidation, suppression of regional militias, and catalyzed Argentina’s so-called “Golden Age” (43:42-45:42).

  • “All of those...that we tend to glorify...came to be after the 1870s, after the end of this war.” (45:42, Schenoni)

• Analytical Point: Sometimes, stronger pre-war states are defeated (Paraguay), while weaker ones (Argentina) are strengthened by mobilization, warfare, and victory (45:21).

  • “What is fundamentally true and also intuitive is that [Argentina’s development] would have never happened if Argentina had continued in a state of constant civil war.” (45:42, Schenoni)

• Other Cases

  • Chile: A ‘winner who keeps winning’, with wars reinforcing state capacity and domestic stability (51:26).
  • Peru: Once strong, but repeated military defeats undermined state capacity.
  • Ecuador/Colombia: An example of a short, single-battle war with only minimal impact on state-building trajectories (52:34-55:28).

Methodological and Future Directions

• Comparative Potential

  • Schenoni proposes applying his more granular, outcome-focused bellicist framework to European history and other regions, using datasets like V-Dem and Correlates of War (55:41-57:22).
    • “It would pride Latin Americans to know that perhaps we did have this laboratory for the theory that it can illuminate other regions and...can travel from Latin America towards other places...” (57:02, Schenoni)

• Nationalism and Nation-Building

  • Schenoni is interested in further research on the origins of nationalism in Latin America and the impact of war on nation-building, drawing on classics like Anderson’s Imagined Communities (57:24-59:25).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Why Latin America Needs to Rethink War and State Formation:

  • “This anti-bellacist consensus...wasn't paying too much attention to this correlation between wars being far more prominent in the 19th century and our state building taking place in that era.” (07:16, Schenoni)

• On Battles as Contingent, Formative Events:

  • “These battles were contingent...as if a random factor that took place there, which also matches with war theory like Clausewitz and others, that have emphasized very much this idea of war as a game of cards.” (22:14, Schenoni)

• On the Value of Studying Defeated States:

  • “In reality, when we look at the European history, what we're looking at is the history of the winners, the history of the states that survived because they won the wars...” (29:41, Schenoni)

• On Taxation During War:

  • “What I find is that these countries tended to tax the local population. The one systematic evidence that I find is that these states devalued the currencies during these wars by around 15 to 18%...this devaluation created a domestic inflationary tax.” (34:33-37:01, Schenoni)

• Personal/Family History:

  • “My great great grandparents immigrated to Argentina...they decided to continue to Paraguay, because Paraguay was seen at the time, 10 years before the war ended, as perhaps a better destination.” (50:42, Schenoni)

• On Future Research:

  • “I think nationalism and the origins of Latin American nationalism has also been slightly understudied in political science in particular...looking at the impact of wars on that aspect of state formation...is a very promising avenue.” (57:24, Schenoni)

Important Timestamps

• 01:55 — Origins of the project: serendipitous gap in literature
• 03:41 — Explaining Tilly’s “war makes state” theory
• 05:59 — Why war was ‘taken out’ of Latin American state-building analyses
• 08:34 — Components of “anti-bellacist” arguments: normative, logical, empirical
• 14:27 — Extensions to classical bellicist theory: focus on war outcomes
• 19:36 — The centrality and contingency of battles in state-building
• 24:51 — Theoretical framing of elite conflicts during state-building
• 28:24 — Why Latin America is an ideal laboratory: persistence of both winners and losers
• 31:11 — Striking data on frequency, severity of Latin American interstate war
• 33:44 — Taxation and inflation: states do tax local populations in wartime
• 39:39 — Paraguay and Argentina: divergent fates explained by war outcomes
• 45:42 — Outcomes: State trajectory reversals and consolidation
• 51:26 — “Messy” cases: Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia
• 55:41 — Next research: applying the framework globally
• 57:24 — Research directions: origins of nationalism in Latin America

Conclusion

Schenoni’s research compellingly challenges anti-bellicist traditions in Latin American studies, showing that 19th-century interstate wars, far from being rare or inconsequential, played a central, measurable role in shaping long-run state capacity and development. Latin America, rather than being an exception, offers an unrivaled empirical setting for rethinking theories of war and state formation. The conversation is filled with vivid examples, a careful eye for data, and an ambitious agenda for future comparative research.