By Reason or by Force: The domestic pacification of South America (1830-1929)
Abstract
South America was plagued by internal conflict during the 19th century that destabilized the region’s economies and political systems. At the beginning of the 20th century, however, levels of political violence throughout the region declined dramatically. Existing scholarship has paid surprisingly little attention to this historic transformation in part because of the absence of comprehensive data on revolts. Drawing on the work of historians, we create a comprehensive dataset on revolts in ten South American countries from 1830 to 1929, and we develop an original typology of rebellions. We find that revolts from outside the state apparatus declined dramatically during this period, while rebellions from inside the state, such as coups, did not. We show that increases in the size and professionalization of the military, which stemmed from the export boom and the threat of international conflict, drove the decline in outsider rebellions.
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Atehortúa Cruz, Adolfo León y Vélez, Humberto. (1994). Estado y fuerzas armadas en Colombia (1886-1953). Tercer Mundo Editores.
Banks, Arthur S. y Wilson, Kenneth. (2014). Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive. Databanks International.
Bergquist, Charles W. (1978). Coffee and Conflict in Colombia, 1886-1910. Duke University Press.
Bértola, Luis y Ocampo, José Antonio. (2013). The Economic Development of Latin America since Independence. Oxford University Press.
Bolt, Jutta, van Zanden, Jan Luiten, de Jong, Herman y Inklaar, Robert (2018). Rebasing «Maddison»: New Income Comparisons and the Shape of Long-run Economic Development. GGDC Research Memorandum, 174. University of Groningen.
Cederman, Lars-Erik y Vogt, Manuel. (2017). Dynamics and Logics of Civil War. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 61(9), 1997.
Centeno, Miguel Ángel. (2002). Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America. Pennsylvania State University Press.
Chin, John J., Carter, David B. y Wright, Joseph G. (2021). The Varieties of Coups d’État: Introducing the Colpus Dataset. International Studies Quarterly, 65(4), 1040-1051.
Coppedge, Michael et al. (2021). «V-Dem Codebook v11.1". Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project.
Deas, M. D. (2002). El papel de la Iglesia, el ejército y la policía en las elecciones colombianas entre 1850 y 1930.
Dunkerley, James. (2003). Orígenes del poder militar: Bolivia, 1879-1935. Plural.
Fearon, James D. (2004). Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer than Others? Journal of Peace Research, 41(3), 275-301.
Federico, Giovanni y Tena-Junguito, Antonio. (2016). World Trade, 1800-1938: A New Data-Set. European Historical Economics Society, Working Paper, 93.
Fitch, John Samuel. (1998). The Armed Forces and Democracy in Latin America. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Gallo, Ezequiel. (1986). Argentina: Society and Politics, 1880-1916. En Leslie Bethell (Ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America (vol. 5). Cambridge University Press.
Gaylord Warren, Harris. (1985). Rebirth of the Paraguayan Republic: The First Colorado Era, 1878-1904. University of Pittsburgh Press.
Henderson, Peter V. N. (2008). Gabriel García Moreno and Conservative State Formation in the Andes. University of Texas Press.
Holsti, K. J. (1996). The State, War, and the State of War. Cambridge University Press.
Huntington, Samuel P. (1957). The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. Belknap.
Johnson, John J. (1964). The Military and Society in Latin America. Stanford University Press.
Kallsen, Osvaldo. (1983). Historia del Paraguay contemporáneo [History of contemporary Paraguay]. Imprenta Modelo.
Lewis, Paul H. (1993). Political Parties and Generations in Paraguay’s Liberal Era, 1869-1940. University of North Carolina Press.
Lieuwen, Edwin. (1961). Arms and Politics in Latin America. Praeger.
López-Alves, F. (2020). State formation and democracy in Latin America, 1810-1900. Duke University Press.
López Chirico, Selva. (1985). El estado y fuerzas armadas en el Uruguay del siglo XX. Ediciones de la Banda Oriental.
Loveman, Brian. (1999). For la Patria: Politics and the Armed Forces in Latin America. Scholarly Resources.
Madrid, Raúl L. (2019). The Partisan Path to Democracy: Argentina in Comparative Perspective. Comparative Political Studies, 52(10), 1535-1569.
Madrid, Raúl L. (2025). The Birth of Democracy in South America. Cambridge University Press.
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Maingot, Anthony P. (1967). Colombia: Civil-Military Relations in a Political-Culture of Conflict (PhD diss., University of Florida).
Mares, David R. (2001). Violent Peace: Militarized Interstate Bargaining in Latin America. Columbia University Press.
Mazzuca, Sebastián. (2021). Latecomer State Formation: Political Geography and Capacity Failure in Latin America. Yale University Press.
Moore, Richard Kinney. (1978). Soldiers, Politicians, and Reaction: The Etiology of Military Rule in Uruguay (PhD diss., University of Arizona).
Necochea, Hernán. (1985). Fuerzas armadas y política en Chile, 1810-1970. Casa de las Américas.
Nunn, Frederick M. (1983). Yesterday’s Soldiers: European Military Professionalism in South America, 1890-1940. University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
Palmer, Glenn et al. (2022). The MID5 Dataset, 2011-2014: Procedures, Coding Rules, and Description. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 39(4), 470-482.
Philip, George. (1985). The Military in South American Politics. Croom Helm.
Potash, Robert A. (1969). The Army and Politics in Argentina, 1928-1945: Yrigoyen to Perón. Stanford University Press.
Powell, Jonathan M. y Thyne, Clayton L. (2011). Global Instances of Coups from 1950 to 2010: A New Dataset. Journal of Peace Research, 48(2), 252-270.
Rabinovich, Alejandro M. y Sobrevilla Perea, Natalia. (2019). Regular and Irregular Forces in Conflict: Nineteenth Century Insurgencies in South America. Small Wars and Insurgencies, 30(4-5), 775-796.
Ramírez Jr., Gilberto. (1987). The Reform of the Argentine Army (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin).
Resende-Santos, João. (2007). Neorealism, States, and the Modern Mass Army. Cambridge University Press.
Ribeiro, José Iran. (2011). O fortalecimento do Estado Imperial a través do recrutamento militar no contexto da Guerra dos Farrapos. Revista Brasileira da História, 31(62), 271-289.
Rodríguez, Linda Alexander. (1985). The Search for Public Policy: Regional Politics and Government Finances in Ecuador, 1830-1940. University of California Press.
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Romero y Cordero, Remigio. (1991). El ejército en cien años de vida republicana, 1830-1930. Centro de Estudios Históricos del Ejército.
Rouquié, Alain. (1987). The Military and the State in Latin America. London: University of California Press.
Sábato, Hilda. (2010). ¿Quién controla el poder militar? Disputas en torno a la formación del Estado en el siglo XIX. En Oscar Moreno (Ed.), La construcción de la nación argentina: El rol de las fuerzas armadas (pp. 125-140). Ministerio de Defensa.
Sábato, Hilda. (2018). Republics of the New World: The Revolutionary Political Experiment in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Princeton University Press.
Safford, Frank. (1992). The Problem of Political Order in Early Republican Spanish America. Journal of Latin American Studies, 24(S1) 83-97.
Sater, William F. y Herwig, Holger H. (1999). The Grand Illusion: The Prussianization of the Chilean Army. University of Nebraska Press.
Schaposnik, Eduardo C. (1985). La democratización de las fuerzas armadas venezolanas. Fundación Nacional Gonzalo Barrios, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales.
Scheina, Robert L. (2003). Latin America’s Wars: The Age of the Caudillo, 1791-1899. Brassey’s.
Schenoni, Luis. (2021). Bringing War Back In: Victory and State Formation in Latin America. American Journal of Political Science, 65(2), 405-421.
Schenoni, Luis. (2024). Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat and the State in Latin America. Cambridge University Press.
Schenoni, Luis, Goertz, Gary, Diehl, Paul y Owsiak, Andy. (2024). The Saavedra Lamas Peace: How a Norm Complex Evolved and Crystallized to Eliminate War in the Americas. International Studies Quarterly, 68(2).
Singer, J. David. (1988). Reconstructing the Correlates of War Dataset on Material Capabilities of States, 1816-1985. International Interactions, 14(2), 115-132.
Somma, Nicolás M. (2011). When the Powerful Rebel: Armed Insurgency in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame).
Stepan, Alfred. (1973). The New Professionalism of Internal Warfare and Military Role Expansion. En Alfred Stepan (Ed.), Authoritarian Brazil: Origins, Policies, and Future. Yale University Press.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. (1945). Democracy in America. 1835. Reprint. Knopf.
Toronto, Nathan W. (2017). Why Professionalize? Economic Modernization and Military Professionalism. Foreign Policy Analysis, 13(4), 854-875.
Valenzuela, J. Samuel. (1985). Democratización vía reforma: la expansión del sufragio en Chile. IDES.
Valenzuela, J. Samuel. (1996). Building Aspects of Democracy before Democracy: Electoral Practices in Nineteenth Century Chile. En Eduardo Posada-Carbó (Ed.), The History of Elections in Europe and Latin America (pp. 223-257). Palgrave MacMillan.
Vanger, Milton I. (1980). The Model Country: José Batlle y Ordoñez of Uruguay, 1907-1915. University Press of New England.
Vanger, Milton I. (2010). Uruguay’s José Batlle y Ordoñez: The Determined Visionary, 1915-1917. Lynne Rienner.
Warren, Harris Gaylord. (1985). Rebirth of the Paraguayan Republic: The First Colorado Era, 1878-1904. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985.
Whigham, Thomas L. (2002). The Paraguayan War, vol. 1, Causes and Early Conflict. University of Nebraska Press.
Williams, John Hoyt. (1979). The Rise and Fall of the Paraguayan Republic, 1800-1870. Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas Press.
Wood, James. (2011). The Society of Equality: Popular Republicanism and Democracy in Santiago de Chile, 1818-1851. University of New Mexico.
Aranzaes, Nicanor. (1918). Las revoluciones de Bolivia. Casa Editora Talleres Gráficos.
Arráiz, Antonio. (1991). Los días de la ira: Las guerras civiles en Venezuela, 1830-1903. Vadell Hermanos.
Atehortúa Cruz, Adolfo León y Vélez, Humberto. (1994). Estado y fuerzas armadas en Colombia (1886-1953). Tercer Mundo Editores.
Banks, Arthur S. y Wilson, Kenneth. (2014). Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive. Databanks International.
Bergquist, Charles W. (1978). Coffee and Conflict in Colombia, 1886-1910. Duke University Press.
Bértola, Luis y Ocampo, José Antonio. (2013). The Economic Development of Latin America since Independence. Oxford University Press.
Bolt, Jutta, van Zanden, Jan Luiten, de Jong, Herman y Inklaar, Robert (2018). Rebasing «Maddison»: New Income Comparisons and the Shape of Long-run Economic Development. GGDC Research Memorandum, 174. University of Groningen.
Cederman, Lars-Erik y Vogt, Manuel. (2017). Dynamics and Logics of Civil War. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 61(9), 1997.
Centeno, Miguel Ángel. (2002). Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America. Pennsylvania State University Press.
Chin, John J., Carter, David B. y Wright, Joseph G. (2021). The Varieties of Coups d’État: Introducing the Colpus Dataset. International Studies Quarterly, 65(4), 1040-1051.
Coppedge, Michael et al. (2021). «V-Dem Codebook v11.1". Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project.
Deas, M. D. (2002). El papel de la Iglesia, el ejército y la policía en las elecciones colombianas entre 1850 y 1930.
Dunkerley, James. (2003). Orígenes del poder militar: Bolivia, 1879-1935. Plural.
Fearon, James D. (2004). Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer than Others? Journal of Peace Research, 41(3), 275-301.
Federico, Giovanni y Tena-Junguito, Antonio. (2016). World Trade, 1800-1938: A New Data-Set. European Historical Economics Society, Working Paper, 93.
Fitch, John Samuel. (1998). The Armed Forces and Democracy in Latin America. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Gallo, Ezequiel. (1986). Argentina: Society and Politics, 1880-1916. En Leslie Bethell (Ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America (vol. 5). Cambridge University Press.
Gaylord Warren, Harris. (1985). Rebirth of the Paraguayan Republic: The First Colorado Era, 1878-1904. University of Pittsburgh Press.
Henderson, Peter V. N. (2008). Gabriel García Moreno and Conservative State Formation in the Andes. University of Texas Press.
Holsti, K. J. (1996). The State, War, and the State of War. Cambridge University Press.
Huntington, Samuel P. (1957). The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. Belknap.
Johnson, John J. (1964). The Military and Society in Latin America. Stanford University Press.
Kallsen, Osvaldo. (1983). Historia del Paraguay contemporáneo [History of contemporary Paraguay]. Imprenta Modelo.
Lewis, Paul H. (1993). Political Parties and Generations in Paraguay’s Liberal Era, 1869-1940. University of North Carolina Press.
Lieuwen, Edwin. (1961). Arms and Politics in Latin America. Praeger.
López-Alves, F. (2020). State formation and democracy in Latin America, 1810-1900. Duke University Press.
López Chirico, Selva. (1985). El estado y fuerzas armadas en el Uruguay del siglo XX. Ediciones de la Banda Oriental.
Loveman, Brian. (1999). For la Patria: Politics and the Armed Forces in Latin America. Scholarly Resources.
Madrid, Raúl L. (2019). The Partisan Path to Democracy: Argentina in Comparative Perspective. Comparative Political Studies, 52(10), 1535-1569.
Madrid, Raúl L. (2025). The Birth of Democracy in South America. Cambridge University Press.
Madrid, Raul y Schenoni, Luis. (2024). Reining in Rebellion: The Decline of Political Violence in South America, 1830-1929. International Security, 48(3), 129-167.
Maingot, Anthony P. (1967). Colombia: Civil-Military Relations in a Political-Culture of Conflict (PhD diss., University of Florida).
Mares, David R. (2001). Violent Peace: Militarized Interstate Bargaining in Latin America. Columbia University Press.
Mazzuca, Sebastián. (2021). Latecomer State Formation: Political Geography and Capacity Failure in Latin America. Yale University Press.
Moore, Richard Kinney. (1978). Soldiers, Politicians, and Reaction: The Etiology of Military Rule in Uruguay (PhD diss., University of Arizona).
Necochea, Hernán. (1985). Fuerzas armadas y política en Chile, 1810-1970. Casa de las Américas.
Nunn, Frederick M. (1983). Yesterday’s Soldiers: European Military Professionalism in South America, 1890-1940. University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
Palmer, Glenn et al. (2022). The MID5 Dataset, 2011-2014: Procedures, Coding Rules, and Description. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 39(4), 470-482.
Philip, George. (1985). The Military in South American Politics. Croom Helm.
Potash, Robert A. (1969). The Army and Politics in Argentina, 1928-1945: Yrigoyen to Perón. Stanford University Press.
Powell, Jonathan M. y Thyne, Clayton L. (2011). Global Instances of Coups from 1950 to 2010: A New Dataset. Journal of Peace Research, 48(2), 252-270.
Rabinovich, Alejandro M. y Sobrevilla Perea, Natalia. (2019). Regular and Irregular Forces in Conflict: Nineteenth Century Insurgencies in South America. Small Wars and Insurgencies, 30(4-5), 775-796.
Ramírez Jr., Gilberto. (1987). The Reform of the Argentine Army (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin).
Resende-Santos, João. (2007). Neorealism, States, and the Modern Mass Army. Cambridge University Press.
Ribeiro, José Iran. (2011). O fortalecimento do Estado Imperial a través do recrutamento militar no contexto da Guerra dos Farrapos. Revista Brasileira da História, 31(62), 271-289.
Rodríguez, Linda Alexander. (1985). The Search for Public Policy: Regional Politics and Government Finances in Ecuador, 1830-1940. University of California Press.
Rodríguez, Linda Alexander. (1994). Introduction. En Linda Alexander Rodríguez (Ed.), Rank and Privilege: The Military and Society in Latin America. Scholarly Resources, 1994.
Romero y Cordero, Remigio. (1991). El ejército en cien años de vida republicana, 1830-1930. Centro de Estudios Históricos del Ejército.
Rouquié, Alain. (1987). The Military and the State in Latin America. London: University of California Press.
Sábato, Hilda. (2010). ¿Quién controla el poder militar? Disputas en torno a la formación del Estado en el siglo XIX. En Oscar Moreno (Ed.), La construcción de la nación argentina: El rol de las fuerzas armadas (pp. 125-140). Ministerio de Defensa.
Sábato, Hilda. (2018). Republics of the New World: The Revolutionary Political Experiment in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Princeton University Press.
Safford, Frank. (1992). The Problem of Political Order in Early Republican Spanish America. Journal of Latin American Studies, 24(S1) 83-97.
Sater, William F. y Herwig, Holger H. (1999). The Grand Illusion: The Prussianization of the Chilean Army. University of Nebraska Press.
Schaposnik, Eduardo C. (1985). La democratización de las fuerzas armadas venezolanas. Fundación Nacional Gonzalo Barrios, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales.
Scheina, Robert L. (2003). Latin America’s Wars: The Age of the Caudillo, 1791-1899. Brassey’s.
Schenoni, Luis. (2021). Bringing War Back In: Victory and State Formation in Latin America. American Journal of Political Science, 65(2), 405-421.
Schenoni, Luis. (2024). Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat and the State in Latin America. Cambridge University Press.
Schenoni, Luis, Goertz, Gary, Diehl, Paul y Owsiak, Andy. (2024). The Saavedra Lamas Peace: How a Norm Complex Evolved and Crystallized to Eliminate War in the Americas. International Studies Quarterly, 68(2).
Singer, J. David. (1988). Reconstructing the Correlates of War Dataset on Material Capabilities of States, 1816-1985. International Interactions, 14(2), 115-132.
Somma, Nicolás M. (2011). When the Powerful Rebel: Armed Insurgency in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame).
Stepan, Alfred. (1973). The New Professionalism of Internal Warfare and Military Role Expansion. En Alfred Stepan (Ed.), Authoritarian Brazil: Origins, Policies, and Future. Yale University Press.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. (1945). Democracy in America. 1835. Reprint. Knopf.
Toronto, Nathan W. (2017). Why Professionalize? Economic Modernization and Military Professionalism. Foreign Policy Analysis, 13(4), 854-875.
Valenzuela, J. Samuel. (1985). Democratización vía reforma: la expansión del sufragio en Chile. IDES.
Valenzuela, J. Samuel. (1996). Building Aspects of Democracy before Democracy: Electoral Practices in Nineteenth Century Chile. En Eduardo Posada-Carbó (Ed.), The History of Elections in Europe and Latin America (pp. 223-257). Palgrave MacMillan.
Vanger, Milton I. (1980). The Model Country: José Batlle y Ordoñez of Uruguay, 1907-1915. University Press of New England.
Vanger, Milton I. (2010). Uruguay’s José Batlle y Ordoñez: The Determined Visionary, 1915-1917. Lynne Rienner.
Warren, Harris Gaylord. (1985). Rebirth of the Paraguayan Republic: The First Colorado Era, 1878-1904. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985.
Whigham, Thomas L. (2002). The Paraguayan War, vol. 1, Causes and Early Conflict. University of Nebraska Press.
Williams, John Hoyt. (1979). The Rise and Fall of the Paraguayan Republic, 1800-1870. Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas Press.
Wood, James. (2011). The Society of Equality: Popular Republicanism and Democracy in Santiago de Chile, 1818-1851. University of New Mexico.
Madrid, R. L., & Schenoni, L. L. (2025). By Reason or by Force: The domestic pacification of South America (1830-1929). América Latina Hoy , 95, e31961. https://doi.org/10.14201/alh.31961
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