Like other famous statements in the social sciences, Charles Tilly’s intuitive dictum ‘war made the state and the state made war’ has been cited countless times without the depth and nuances of Tilly’s argument being necessarily well understood. Luis Schenoni’s book, Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, comes to the rescue of early ideas of the so-called ‘bellicist’ theory of state formation, which explains state-building as a function of war rather than by reference to socio-economic development models, decolonisation processes or anything else. In short, in this original contribution Schenoni argues that war outcomes, rather than the occurrence of war per se, are key to understanding whether wartime state-building will have lasting effects on enhancing state capacity.

The book starts from the observation that the recent literature on state-building other than in Europe, and particularly in Latin America, has taken an ‘antibellicist’ turn. Within this viewpoint, the bellicist theory would at best offer limited insights when applied to the periphery, including Latin America. In the worst case, it would have no value in explaining the development of states in these regions. Schenoni rejects this critique on empirical grounds, arguing instead that recent work has missed a critical piece in constructing the argument, namely post-war processes and whether these institutionalise impulses from war time. Thus, in addition to the triggering effects of the pre-war phase of war, the outcome of war becomes a crucial factor in defining a state’s path toward institutional strength or, alternatively, potentially even the destruction of pre-war institutional arrangements.

Schenoni, in line with other authors who have studied state capacity in Latin America, adopts Michael Mann’s concept of infrastructural power of the state operationalised through three indicators: the state’s abilities to administer basic services, to mobilise manpower and to extract revenues. In light of this understanding, in Part I of the book he revisits early writings on war and state-making and discusses specific mechanisms at work in the phases of war preparation, war and its aftermaths with reference to both classical and contemporary scholars of the state. He then goes on to compare nineteenth-century Latin America with the European experience, countering some generalised beliefs about the former. Contrary to common claims at least in the political science literature, Schenoni presents evidence showing that Latin America’s nineteenth-century wars were frequent and severe, that they involved massive mobilisations and that states depended on taxing their populations rather than on foreign funds to counter external threats.

Part II consists of several region-wide analyses to probe the observational implications of what Schenoni calls the ‘classical bellicist argument’. Employing different statistical techniques, the author draws on a variety of sources and data to shed light on war preparation and the impact of wars on state capacity in the short and long term. While some may object to the choice of specific indicators, techniques or interpretations, the chapters’ transparency in presenting the methodological choices and the results lend credit to the author’s claims, in particular the argument that losing war had a negative impact on state capacity.

Part III goes on to complement the quantitative analyses with qualitative case studies on the consequences of war on state building in the River Plate, the main contenders of the War of the Pacific – Chile and Peru – as well as in Mexico and Central America. The case studies are presented as carefully constructed and nicely flowing narratives, although the reader would have benefitted from the addition of a couple of concluding paragraphs summarising the main findings from the case studies in a rigorous, more explicit way. Additionally, more transparency on the qualitative method employed for the case studies would have been desirable, similar to the details provided on the statistical models in Part II. The reader is not informed as to how the narratives were constructed, i.e. which elements of state-building were systematically considered and which were left out, what weight was given to potential competing explanations, and how the different sources were analysed. Interestingly, Schenoni notes that he found national histories often to be biased, which led him to consult archives in the United States and the United Kingdom containing first-hand accounts of nineteenth-century Western diplomats who witnessed Latin America’s inter-state conflicts. This commendable effort should have been elaborated on by providing an explanation of how these primary sources influenced the analysis, in addition to the many classical works on nineteenth-century Latin America cited in the case studies.

In its short and succinct conclusion, the book offers valuable reflections on the implications of the bellicist account of Latin American state-building for other parts of the world, mainly Europe, thus pointing the way to future research endeavours. In doing so, it underlines its contribution to our understanding of state-making world-wide, on the one hand, and to theorising from the periphery rather than simply supplying a case to the core of the discipline – where theory is developed based on European and North American experience – on the other.

Schenoni’s work is not the typical go-to read that provides information about state-making and the history of the Latin American state in an easily approachable and comprehensive fashion. The first chapters of the book in particular are set up as a discussion, a dialogue with critics more than a narrative proper, drawing in sometimes disconnected debates and views and loaded with footnotes. Rather, it 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.