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         Vol. 4  No. 2     December 15, 2003

Latin America's Wars: The Age of the Caudillo, 1791-1899. Vol I. Robert L. Scheina. Washington D.C., Brassey's Inc., 2003.

Vera Blinn Reber
Department of History and Philosophy
Shippensburg University

Robert Scheina provides the reader with an encyclopedia description of the military campaigns and strategies of thirty-eight wars in Latin America during the nineteenth century.  Although the wars are presented chronologically, he places them in thirteen categories: Wars for Independence against the Monarchs of Europe, Early Border Wars in Spanish America, Wars of Separation versus Union--Spanish and Portuguese America, Wars of Conquest by the United States and Great Britain, Wars of Conquest (Do-It-Yourself Manifest Destiny)--Filibustering, The Age of the Caudillo in Mid-America, Mid-Nineteenth-Century Intraclass Struggles, Mid-Nineteenth-Century Attempted Territorial Conquest and Reconquest, Late Wars for Independence, Wars of Conquest against Native Americans, An Economic War, Late-Nineteenth-Century Intraclass Struggles and Political Intervention by the United States.  Only in the “Wars of Conquest against Native Americans” does he describe wars that continue well into the twentieth century and which end in 1927.

Scheina begins with a short introduction in which he superficially examines ten causes of the wars in nineteenth century Latin America.  These are: race wars, ideology of independence, separation versus union, boundary disputes, war of territorial conquest, caudilloism, resource wars, intraclass wars, intervention caused by capitalism, and religious wars.

Each chapter is organized in a similar manner.  The chapter begins with a quote that may be interesting but not necessarily relevant to the chapter discussion.  Scheina then examines the event beginning the war, "The Spark," the background to the war, the nature of the opposing forces, and the opening strategies.  He discusses the events of each war under various subheadings, often specific battles or campaigns, including conflicts on both land and sea.  The author concludes with his observations about the consequences of the campaigns.

Robert Scheina ends the monograph with a two-page postscript in which he examines the strategic, operational, and tactical surprises that he discovered after a decade of research and writing.  After the postscript there are notes for each chapter. The volume does not have a traditional bibliography, but it does have an index to bibliographical citations; this index lists the note in which the source was first cited and is thus a summary of the sources utilized.  There are thirty-five illustrations throughout the volume, either of various generals or caudillos or of specific conflicts.  The volume includes ten maps of various regions of Latin America, but no maps of specific campaigns.  Appropriately, this work is published by Brassey's Inc., which primarily focuses on military works.

As Robert Scheina suggests, there is a need for a major monograph on the nineteenth century wars of Latin America.  While this may be true, Latin America's Wars: The Age of Caudillos, 1791-1899, provides only limited treatment of the wars with summaries of military campaigns in an encyclopedic manner and in an outline form.  Analysis is superficial, when provided, due to the large number of wars discussed.  This volume may be useful to check on basic strategies or campaigns of particular conflicts; it does not provide a comprehensive analysis of any war.  The subtitle is misleading; it was the reason I agreed to review this work.  Having recently used, in my Latin American History survey, John Charles Chasteen's creative and original monograph, Heroes on Horseback: A Life and Times of the Last Gaucho Caudillos, I looked forward to reading another work dealing with caudillos in Latin America.  I was disappointed to discover that caudillos are not the focus or even a major interest of Scheina.  If he had been interested in caudillos, he would have focused in greater detail on caudillos.  They appear in the text, but simply as military men; there is no treatment of them as caudillos or what the distinction is between a military general and a caudillo.  Caudilloism is but one of his ten causes of wars in Latin America and receives less coverage in his introduction than the ideologies of independence. 

Scheina's extensive research should have resulted in providing the reader with an in-depth understanding of military conflicts in Latin America.  The author, however, misses two opportunities, the introduction and the postscript, to instruct the reader on the significance of military influence in Latin America and of the role of the caudillo.  The introduction, which might have been an insightful essay on wars in Latin America, is a superficial listing of a variety of general causes suggested by twentieth century historians.  Informing the reader that "religion played an important role in Latin America wars" (p. XXVIII), Scheina mentions prominent clerics such as Miguel Hidalgo and José Morelos and notes that Rafael Carrera's army included many clerics.  This adds nothing to our understanding of the religious causes of Latin American wars.  The Haitian war for independence is categorized as a "Race War," and it is the first war discussed under "Wars for Independence."  Three sentences in the introduction on race wars and three background paragraphs in chapter one on Haiti do not make a case for a race war.  In effect there is no weighing or analysis of these ten causes of wars.  Are we to believe that all causes are of equal importance?  A careful evaluation of causes might have provided the author with a more original method in which to organize his discussion of the wars in Latin America.  Would it not be more useful for the reader to reduce the number of categories of wars to three or four rather than thirteen?  As it is, the categories have limited usefulness.  There is no discussion as to why the author includes five wars under Part 7 as "Mid-nineteenth-Century Intraclass Struggles."  Why is there only the Spanish-American War, 1898, under Part 13 "Political Intervention by the United States"?  How and why is the Spanish-American war different from "Wars of Conquest by the United States and Great Britain," or why is that not part of "Late Wars for Independence"? Is it significant that there are six "Wars for Independence against the Monarchs of Europe" and two "Late Wars of Independence"?  The reader can only guess as to the importance of these categories. 

The postscript is no more satisfactory for this reader than the introduction.  It was interesting to read the "surprises," but again the discussion is too short and superficial.  The Latin American wars of independence are called civil wars, but that is not a cause discussed in the introduction.  The two short paragraphs on the caudillos that note their importance and their declining influence toward the end of the nineteenth century do not justify the subtitle.  What about the consequences of these wars?  Is the short paragraph under tactical surprises really a satisfactory postscript?  There is no effort to put the wars into a broader context. 

It is highly unlikely that one author can produce a book about thirty-eight Latin American wars that would be satisfactory to any reviewer because of the difficulty of dealing accurately and adequately with each war.  An examination of the notes and the index to full bibliographical citations points to the research problems.  I illustrate with two examples: The War of the Triple Alliance and the Spanish-American War.  Although Scheina refers to two primary printed sources on the War of the Triple Alliance, George Thompson's The War in Paraguay and George Frederick Masterman's Seven Eventful Years, he fails to utilize major secondary materials and apparently has neither consulted Pelhman H. Box's The Origin of the Paraguayan War nor any work by Harris Gaylord Warren or John Hoyt Williams.  Why use Jurg Meister's study of Francisco Solano López over other secondary sources?   The problem of sources of the Spanish-American war is more serious since there is an excellent military history of the war, David Trask's The War with Spain in 1898.  Why the reliance on Vance von Borries?  A spurious quote opens this chapter, as no such telegram exists from William Randolph Hearst.  While Scheina's effort to use primary sources is laudable, the appropriate use of primary sources also depends on broad understanding and reading in secondary sources that aids one in dealing with the contradictions of the primary sources.  Because this is a descriptive rather than an analytical work, the choice of sources for the description is significant and questionable. 

One wishes Robert Scheina had put together an edited work on Latin America's nineteenth century wars: one in which a specialist had written each chapter.  Specialists exist on all these Latin American wars, and an edited volume would better serve Latin American social scientists.  This is a project that the author can still consider.  Until we have such a volume, Robert Scheina's Latin America's Wars will serve as a single volume reference work for the military campaigns and strategies of these nineteenth century wars in Latin American.

    Last updated: December 31, 2003