In Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth Century Latin America, Luis Schenoni revives and refines classical bellicist theory. Although the argument that war makes states originated in Europe, Schenoni shows that it also explains state formation in Latin America. In doing so, this empirically innovative, theoretically sophisticated book challenges prevailing assumptions about the political and economic history of Latin America. Bringing War Back In proposes a critical but respectful reconsideration of multiple recent works (e.g., Marcus Kurtz, Latin American State Building in Comparative Perspective, 2013; Ryan Saylor, State Building in Boom Times, 2014; Hillel Soifer, State Building in Latin America, 2015; Sebastián Mazzuca, Latecomer State Formation, 2021; Didact Queralt, Pawned States, 2022), making major advances in the literature on state formation in Latin America and beyond.
Schenoni proceeds in three steps. First, he introduces classical bellicist theory. Moving beyond the maxim that “war made the state and the state made war” (Charles Tilly, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making, 1975, 42), Schenoni extracts two key insights from an earlier literature on war and state formation: (a) states defeated in war do not necessarily disappear; (b) beyond wartime, the pre- and postwar phases also influence state formation. Schenoni builds on these points to propose that both victory and defeat shape states’ trajectories. As Schenoni explains, “state building is triggered by war, but the outcomes of war determine whether those dynamics are reproduced or dismantled in the longer term” (21).
Schenoni also compares the processes of warfare and state formation in Europe and Latin America, and he offers a fresh, robustly researched description of war and state-building in pre- and post-independence Latin America. Through this exercise, he derives observable implications and hypotheses that are tested using cross-national time-series data and case studies in the second and third parts of the book. Crucially, Schenoni argues that in nineteenth-century wars, victory and defeat were largely unpredictable; close observers and the belligerents themselves could not anticipate how wars would end. This plausibly exogenous variation in war outcomes allows Schenoni to deploy several strong causal identification strategies in Chapters 4–6.
In the second part of the book, Schenoni analyzes an impressive range of quantitative data. Rather than limiting his analysis to wars, Chapter 4 also considers militarized interstate disputes (MIDs)—a creative move that allows Schenoni to examine “whether the threat of war triggered state formation dynamics” (87). Chapters 5 and 6 turn to war outcomes. Across multiple models and dependent variables, Schenoni shows that defeated states subsequently reduced their state-building, while victorious states experienced fewer internal rebellions and intensified their railroad construction, tax collection, and economic development. By the end of the nineteenth century, victorious states had the highest levels of state capacity in the region.
Subsequently, the third section of the book offers three analytic narratives. The first case study focuses on the Paraguayan War (1864–1970)—an oft-overlooked war whose scale will shock many readers. The second case study examines the War of the Pacific (1879–1883). The last case study chapter is somewhat less focused; it discusses Mexico’s contrasting experiences of victory and defeat throughout the nineteenth century, alongside a brief analysis of Central America (especially Costa Rica). The case studies illustrate the argument so well that it is a shame they are withheld until near the end of the book. After reading Part 1, some readers may prefer to jump ahead to Part 3, then flip back to read the quantitative analysis in Part 2.
Bringing War Back In makes several significant contributions. Schenoni has left his mark on classical bellicist theory and theories of state formation more broadly. Beyond simply bringing war back in, Schenoni articulates exactly how war makes states, with careful attention to foreign threats short of war, wartime dynamics, and postwar trajectories. His discussion of the postwar period is especially original and impactful, illustrating how the glow of victory or the shadow of defeat colors a state’s political and institutional development long after a war has ended.
Schenoni’s theoretical arguments are also notable for distinguishing between central and peripheral elites. Schenoni distinguishes the motivations and incentives of different elite actors, offering careful predictions about how each should be expected to react to foreign threats and war, and how their actions undermine or consolidate state power.
Empirically, Schenoni’s qualitative and quantitative research is a major contribution to the historiography of nineteenth-century Latin America. By underscoring the extent of warfare in nineteenth-century Latin America, Bringing War Back In suggests that comparisons between Europe and Latin America are more apt than is often assumed. Moreover, the book offers a new explanation for long-term variation in state capacity in Latin America, as well as the timing of periods of state development or retrenchment. Beyond the impressive level of detail in the analytic narratives—which are replete with primary source evidence—Schenoni uses multiple dependent variables to measure state formation. Whether considering railroad construction, taxation, or revenue, Schenoni demonstrates that victory and defeat in war are crucial factors in explaining state building in Latin America.
These findings are all the more convincing because Schenoni persuasively argues that victory and defeat in nineteenth-century wars hinged on contingent, unexpected events. Rather than being endogenous to prewar state capacity, the outcomes of wars often turned on unseasonable weather, atypical river currents, accidental shootings, horses getting bogged down in mud, yellow fever outbreaks, and, in one instance, an ill-fated collision with a reef, which caused a shipwreck. While Schenoni exercises good judgment in choosing not to describe war outcomes as natural experiments (which would be a stretch), his presentation of victory or defeat as orthogonal to state capacity is extensively documented and well-justified. This move significantly bolsters the book’s causal arguments.
Indeed, Schenoni’s multi-method research design is so impressive that it constitutes a third contribution. Bringing War Back In is a triumph of quantitative and qualitative research, all rolled into one compelling package. Schenoni deftly deploys the latest advances in qualitative and historical research, making skillful use of critical junctures and counterfactual reasoning in developing his theory and in the case studies. Chapters 7–9 are excellent examples of process tracing in action, though more explicit use of the vocabulary and tools of process tracing would have made Schenoni’s argumentation more tractable and transparent. Regardless, Schenoni’s attention to timing and sequence and his use of archival evidence to document real-time expectations result in superb within-case analyses. Elsewhere in the book, the case studies are complemented by difference-in-differences regression models, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), and the synthetic control method (SCM). It is no exaggeration to say Schenoni has thrown the full methodological toolkit at his research question, with remarkably consistent results. In addition to its substantive importance, Bringing War Back In would be a valuable addition to graduate syllabi on scope and methods, research design, and qualitative and multi-method research.
