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<title>War and Nation Building in Latin America: Crash Course World History 225 - Analysis Report</title>
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<h1>War and Nation Building in Latin America: Crash Course World History 225</h1>
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<div id="transcript"><p> Hi, I'm John Green. This is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to return to two of our favorite themes, the creation of nation-states and the role of war. And we're going to focus on a region that often gets overlooked in world history, Latin America. Wait, Mr. Green, Mr. Green, there's another America where they speak Latin? Well, yes and no, me from the past. In fact, the United States is not America. This is America. And no, people in Latin America do not speak Latin. We call it Latin America because, you know, European hegemony and naming things. So I know this will lead to be being accused of Euro-Centrism, but if we're going to talk about nation-states in Latin America, we do have to begin in Europe. Specifically, I want to talk about a controversial theory about how nation-states emerge coming from a book called Coversion, Capital, and European States by Charles Tilly. It's a pretty dense book, but the basic theory is that some European states were able to transform themselves into what Tilly calls national states between the 16th and 20th centuries because their rulers were able to develop the coercive institutions, you know, like police, and especially the army that protected their populations from outsiders. And also to protect from internal revolution.</p><p>So you have the army that keeps you safe from outside threats, and then the police keeping you safe from inside threats. At the same time, these national states developed the economic institutions to extract revenue, to pay for this coercion, which allowed the state to flourish. So the state needs revenue to make its army and police work, and the key to that, of course, is war, or at least the threat of war. But for this cycle that we've talked about in the past to work, it has to be a specific kind of war, right? It has to be an international war, a war against a different foreign power, because civil wars are not good for the economy, and also obviously bad for like the institutions of a state. Okay, let's go to the thought bubble. So Tilly starts with the highly debatable proposition that war creates states, which then fight wars, which further enhance the power of states. For the most part, European wars were over control of territory, right? With the state either trying to extend its territory or prevent its neighbors from extending theirs. To expand your territory or defend against someone else's expansion, rulers needed armies, and this became the state's first large-scale organization. Armies required additional organizations, especially ones that collected taxes, so states with large armies tended to bureaucratize. According to this theory, wars also helped in the transition to more direct rule by the state. Before 1750, most European states relied on intermediaries, like local clergy and landlords, to do what governments do. But these intermediaries could get in the way, so the rulers started bypassing them and instituting more direct forms of rule. But direct rule was intrusive in citizens' lives, especially when they were required to serve in the army, or pay taxes to support the army.</p><p>Now forced conscription into the army is generally unpopular, but it allows citizens to have some leverage over the state, because then they make up the army. Citizens' soldiers and citizen taxpayers can use this leverage to extract concessions from the state, usually in the form of greater political participation, which has been a hallmark of classical European liberal democracy. Now of course, this is all highly theoretical, but as a model for state formation, it's also somewhat elegant, and more importantly, because it applies to Europe, and particularly to post-industrial Europe, Eurocentric versions of history will often hold this theory up as one of the reasons for Europe's success in world history, especially compared to other regions, like, say, Latin America. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So there's this persistent stereotype of Latin American states that for most of their history, most of them have been ruled by military strongmen who use their armies to create strong states that oppressed the people. And like many of the stereotypical historical narratives we've seen, there's some truth to that picture. But Latin America encompasses a lot of states and has been around for a long time, so generalizations aren't going to apply equally to all places at all times. Like in general, generalizations just don't work that well, and while there is a lot of shared history and culture in Mexico, in Central America, and South America, it's worth remembering that Venezuela is as far away from Uruguay as Molly is from Romania. So anyway, we've got this stereotype of the strong man ruling these strong Latin American states, but it's not that simple. In his book, Blood and Death War in the nation, state, and Latin America, historian Miguel on Hell's Centeno posits that while Latin America has had more than its share of military regimes, this is a reflection of the weakness of the state. And then goes on to argue that this may be the result of the absence of international wars in Central and South America. I mean, yes, there have been wars between Latin American states, but they've been surprisingly brief and compared with 20th century European wars, not particularly destructive. Part of the reason for that is that while Latin American countries have frequently been ruled by military leaders, they often lack the capacity to raise large numbers of troops and the taxes to pay for them, and thus their armies can't fight long drawn out wars. Another reason is geography. Latin America's huge and geographically diverse, but the borders of many of its countries tend to be inhospitable for settlement, and without a lot of people living on the frontiers, there's less opportunity and less reason for conflict.</p><p>It's the same reason the US hasn't gotten in a war with Canada for like 170 years. There's just nothing up there. No offense Canada. Now, some offense. What do you have that we need? Trees, snow, hockey? We've got hockey and Dallas. Also, in general, Centeno argues that Latin American nation states tend to see themselves as sister republics, as he wrote, the continent is seen as a larger community over and above the nation state. But Latin America has seen a lot of civil wars in the last 200 years, and this is the crucial distinction. When Latin American states mobilize their militaries, it's usually against their own citizens. As Centeno puts it, the enemy of Gopatria was perceived not as the nation next door, but as those in the population who threatened the social and economic status quo. Often, these enemies have been indigenous people, or especially during the cold war communists and other leftists. So that's one way of thinking about Latin American states and comparing them to European states. You know, maybe relative international peace in central and South America has contributed to the states of Latin America being less successful economically and politically than those in Europe. But as usual in world history and also everything else, the truth persists simplicity.</p><p>So according to Tilly's theory, wars can be beneficial because they provide the potential to create states, but that process doesn't really work unless there's some institutional foundation to build on. And most of the countries in Latin America didn't have that, partly because colonization was designed to make sure that people couldn't put those institutions into place in their homelands, and partly because the wars for independence were so destructive to the region. Then the small-scale wars in Latin America after independence didn't require states to build up their tax collection apparatus or the accompanying financial structures. Because one, they had a steady source of revenue in the form of taxes on the export of commodities. And secondly, if you're just going to have little wars, then you can pay for them with loans from Britain or the United States, which are happy to help, and all they ask in exchange is that the CIA be allowed to run your country. And also that multinational corporations be allowed to extract all of your resources and keep the profits. So because these loans and taxes on trade were available to these states, they didn't have to tax their populations. Now that may seem like a good thing. But taxes, and yes, I know that I'm a huge fan of taxes. I'm biased toward taxes. Taxes are good. Without taxes on individuals, the state didn't have to bargain with its citizens and develop the important bonds between the government and the population that we find in stronger states. Like when a government needs money from its people to function, it kind of has to listen to them. And then there's the oft-sighted fact that wars are really good for fostering nationalism. And nationalism can in fact help build a state as it did in 19th century Germany, which everyone agrees was a great development.</p><p>Anyway, without a lot of international wars, and especially without a sense of a threatening enemy, the nation states of Latin America just aren't as nationalist as their European counterparts. Well, I don't know about that actually. Have you seen Brazil play Argentina at the World Cup? Okay, now I want to turn to another challenge for would-be nationalists in Latin America, Latin America's legacy of racial and class division. Viewers of the first Crash Course World History Series will remember that Latin American society was divided into a pretty rigid hierarchy with Spanish-born peninsulaires at the top, indigenous people and slaves at the bottom, and creoles and mystizos in the middle. When Latin American countries achieved independence, these divisions became a source of anxiety for the new ruling class of creoles. Class and racial distinctions were intertwined, but in general, the ruling class was afraid of losing too much of its power to the lower classes. One finds in world history very few examples when the ruling class is like totally psyched to give its power over to the lower classes. But these race and class divisions also prevented the armed forces from bringing people together. Like in many countries, the army was one of the first places where people from different regions and of different social classes would mingle together. And despite diverse backgrounds, they would start to feel like citizens of the same nation fighting for a common cause. But Latin American armies were small in the social and economic hierarchy between the officers and the enlisted rank were even more pronounced than they were in, say, the United States or in European countries. Another reason for the relative lack of state nationalism in Latin America is the absence of an external enemy. Like if you look at European nationalism, one of the common features is a clearly identifiable other used to build up nationalist feelings in a sense of common identity. Like creoles in one Latin American country likely saw themselves as different from their own indigenous populations, but not so different from the Creole elites in neighboring nations.</p><p>As Miguel Centeno put it, in Latin America, the gulf between white, black, and Indian within countries was always greater than the differences between any of these groups across borders. So to me, all of this suggests that the connection between war and building a national state is not as simple as Tilly suggests. And maybe there's something else to learn here as well. In comparison, with strong European states, like the UK or France or Germany, Latin American countries like Argentina and Peru and Mexico can often appear unstable and violent, like they're failing to provide the main thing that a successful state gives its citizens safety. But those European states are also a lot richer, and a big part of the reason that they are a lot richer is colonialism. One of the central advantages that European states have over Latin American states is that European states were able to begin their lives by extracting lots and lots of value from Latin America, whereas most Latin American states had to begin their existence with extremely destructive wars for independence. So because after the 19th century, most European states became more concerned with providing for the welfare of their citizens than using their security forces against those citizens, and because these states have achieved undeniable economic success along with internal peace, there is a tendency in historical literature to hold them up as the greatest possible example of the nation state. And I want to be clear that many states in Europe have been really successful. People tend to live long lives, crime rates are relatively low, people report feeling safer and happier, but the conditions in which European nation states arose were specific to the region and to the time, and it's a bad idea to try to universalize them as a model for the rest of the world. I mean, thinking about Latin America, where most of the independent nation states are older than either Italy or Germany should remind us that as Miguel Centeno puts it, the process that occurred most successfully in northwestern Europe beginning in the 16th century and culminating in the 19th was the true exception. And I think it's also worth noting the tremendous growth in many Latin American countries in the past couple decades, which reminds us that when it comes to history and picking winners and losers, we should remember that we are not at the end of history, we're in the middle of it. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week. Crash Course is filmed here in the Chad and Stacey Emichold's studio in Indianapolis. It's made with the help of all these nice people and it exists because of your support at Subbable.com.</p><p>Subbable is a voluntary subscription service that allows you to support Crash Course directly so we can keep it free for everyone forever. Also, you can get great perks. So I want to thank all of our Subbable subscribers. I also want to thank you for watching, especially thanks to the educators who share these videos with your students. And as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome.</p></div>
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<h1>The Evolution of Nation-States in Latin America and Europe</h1>
<p>The formation of nation-states has long been a central theme in world history. The interplay between war, societal structures, and state institutions has profoundly shaped the political landscapes of different regions. Europe and Latin America, while interconnected through colonial histories, present vastly different trajectories in nation-state development. These differences underscore the importance of historical context in understanding how states emerge, grow, and function.</p>
<p>In Europe, Charles Tilly's theory of state formation offers a compelling framework to understand the rise of national states. Tilly posits that war serves as both a catalyst and a sustainer for state development. The need for armies to defend territories or expand borders necessitated the creation of bureaucratic institutions to collect taxes. Over time, this cycle of war, taxation, and institutional growth led to the centralization of power and the establishment of direct rule by the state. By the 18th century, European states evolved to rely less on intermediaries like local landlords and clergy, asserting more direct control over their populations. This transition, while intrusive, also fostered greater political participation. Citizens conscripted into armies or taxed to support wars gained leverage over the state, often securing concessions like increased political rights.</p>
<p>European state-building was intricately tied to international wars. These conflicts, though destructive, provided opportunities for states to consolidate power and foster nationalism. The wars emphasized a collective identity, as citizens united against foreign adversaries. This shared sense of purpose strengthened both the state and the bonds between governments and their populations. However, this model, often held up as an example of successful state formation, reflects the unique conditions of Europe during specific historical periods. It is not universally applicable, particularly to regions like Latin America.</p>
<p>Latin America presents a contrasting narrative. While there is a stereotype of Latin American states being dominated by military strongmen, historian Miguel Angel Centeno argues that the prevalence of military regimes reflects the relative weakness of these states. Unlike Europe, Latin America did not experience large-scale, prolonged international wars. Instead, conflicts in the region were often internal, targeting segments of the population perceived as threats to the social and economic status quo. These internal conflicts, combined with the absence of external enemies, limited the development of strong, centralized states.</p>
<p>Several factors contributed to this divergence. Geography played a significant role, as the vast and diverse landscapes of Latin America made borders less contested and less populated, reducing the likelihood of territorial wars. Additionally, the shared cultural and historical ties among Latin American nations fostered a sense of regional solidarity, often viewed as a larger community of sister republics. This lack of external conflict, however, came at the cost of fostering nationalism. In Europe, nationalism often emerged from opposition to a clearly defined "other," but in Latin America, internal divisions along racial and class lines proved more pronounced than differences between nations.</p>
<p>These internal divisions, rooted in the colonial era, further hindered the development of cohesive nation-states. The rigid social hierarchy, with Spanish-born elites at the top and indigenous populations and slaves at the bottom, persisted after independence. Creole elites, who assumed power in the newly independent states, were hesitant to empower the lower classes, fearing the loss of their privileged status. This anxiety stifled efforts to create inclusive national identities. Even the military, often a unifying institution in other contexts, failed to bridge these divides. Latin American armies were small, and the stark social and economic disparities between officers and enlisted ranks reinforced existing hierarchies rather than breaking them down.</p>
<p>The economic foundations of Latin American states also played a critical role. Unlike Europe, where wars necessitated the development of tax systems that created bonds between governments and citizens, Latin American states relied on external sources of revenue. Taxes on commodity exports and loans from foreign powers like Britain and the United States provided the funds needed to sustain governments and small-scale conflicts. While this system avoided the need to tax individuals directly, it also prevented the formation of the bargaining relationships between states and citizens that characterize stronger states. External debt and reliance on foreign powers further undermined state autonomy, allowing external actors to exert significant influence over domestic affairs.</p>
<p>The destructive wars for independence in Latin America also left a lasting impact. Unlike Europe, where state-building often occurred alongside industrialization and economic growth, Latin American states emerged from independence wars with weakened institutions and economies. Colonial systems were designed to extract resources rather than build local capacities, leaving the region ill-prepared for self-governance. The absence of strong institutional foundations hindered efforts to replicate the European model of state formation.</p>
<p>Despite these challenges, it is crucial to avoid oversimplifying the history of Latin America. While its nation-states may appear less stable or successful compared to their European counterparts, this perspective often ignores the enduring legacies of colonialism and the unique conditions under which these states developed. European states' relative wealth and stability were built, in part, on the exploitation of regions like Latin America. The extraction of resources and labor during the colonial period provided European states with a significant advantage, while leaving Latin American states to grapple with the consequences of centuries of exploitation.</p>
<p>Moreover, the notion of success in state formation is not static. Many Latin American countries have experienced significant growth and development in recent decades, challenging the narrative of their perpetual instability. As Miguel Centeno reminds us, the European model of state formation was itself an exception, not the rule. The history of nation-states is ongoing, and the experiences of Latin America highlight the diversity of paths to statehood.</p>
<p>In conclusion, the development of nation-states in Europe and Latin America reflects the complex interplay of war, institutions, and societal structures. While Tilly's theory of war-driven state formation provides valuable insights, its applicability is limited to specific historical and regional contexts. Latin America's history underscores the importance of considering colonial legacies, internal divisions, and economic dependencies in understanding state development. As we continue to study the evolution of nation-states, it is essential to recognize that history is not a competition of winners and losers but an ongoing process shaped by diverse and dynamic forces.</p>
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