Luis L. Schenoni | Book Talk: Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

Bringing War Back In provides a fresh theory connecting war and state formation that incorporates the contingency of warfare and the effects of war outcomes in the long run. The book demonstrates that international wars in nineteenth-century Latin America triggered state-building, that the outcomes of those wars affected the legitimacy and continuity of such efforts, and that the relative capacity of states in this region today continues to reflect those distant processes. Combining comparative historical analysis with cutting edge social science methods, the book provides a comprehensive picture of state formation in nineteenth-century Latin America that is compelling for readers across disciplines, breathes new life into bellicist approaches to state formation, and offers a novel framework to explain variation in state capacity across Latin America and the world.

ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKER

Luis L. Schenoni (Ph.D. University of Notre Dame) is associate professor of international relations and director of the Security Studies Programme at the Department of Political Science, University College London. Dr. Schenoni specializes in the cause and consequences of war, with a regional focus on Latin America. He is the author and winner of the 2025 ECPR Hedley Bull Prize for Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth Century Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2024). His work has also appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, and Security Studies, among other journals. Despite his Argentine origins, this year Dr. Schenoni was granted the Rising Star Award by the European Consortium of Political Research, which is awarded yearly to the most promising early career scholar in any field of European political science. While at Princeton he will conduct research on his second book project “Peace in the Americas” looking at the causes of peace in the western hemisphere.

DISCUSSANT

Miguel Centeno, Musgrave Professor of Sociology, and Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

This event is open to students, faculty, visiting scholars and staff.

Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.