The Introduction introduces the central research questions of the study and summarizes the main arguments. It also lays out the research design and discusses the key concepts and how it measures them. Finally, it provides summaries of all of the chapters in the book.

Chapter 2 uses an original database on historical elections in South America to explore when and where democracy first emerged in the region. Scholars traditionally portrayed nineteenth-century elections in Latin America as farces, but in recent years historians have challenged this view. This chapter shows that many South American elections in the nineteenth century involved significant participation and competition, and a few were even free and fair. Nevertheless, authoritarian rule predominated. Most elections were non-competitive, numerous restrictions on the franchise existed, and voter turnout tended to be low in comparison to Europe and the United States. Moreover, the few democratic episodes in the nineteenth century proved to be quite brief, as the freely elected presidents were either overthrown or subverted democracy to perpetuate themselves or their allies in power. However, in the first three decades of the twentieth century, a great divide occurred. A few South American countries, namely Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay, established democratic regimes that lasted a dozen years or more. By contrast, authoritarian rule deepened in the other six countries of the region

Chapter 4 examines what led to the emergence of the strong parties that helped bring about democracy in some South American countries. It shows that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, relatively strong national parties arose in Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay, and, to a lesser extent, in Argentina and Paraguay, but not in the other countries of the region. Two main factors shaped party development during this period. First, strong parties emerged in countries that had intense but relatively balanced religious or territorial cleavages, where neither side of a cleavage clearly dominated the other. Religious issues, in particular, generated passions that politicians could exploit to build parties. Second, strong parties tended to emerge in countries that had populations concentrated in relatively small areas without major geographic barriers. In these countries, it was easier for politicians to mount national campaigns and for party leaders to develop organizations that penetrated the entire country. These arguments are explored through comparative statistics and brief case studies of party development in all ten South American countries.

Chapter 5 shows how the development of strong parties and professional militaries contributed to the emergence of enduring democracies in Chile and Uruguay. Both countries developed strong parties during the late nineteenth century thanks in part to the geographic concentration of the population and the existence of relatively balanced cleavages. During the nineteenth century, these parties at times sought power via armed revolts, but once the military professionalized, the opposition began to focus exclusively on the electoral route to power. This occurred in the late nineteenth century in Chile, but not until the early twentieth century in Uruguay. In both countries, opposition parties pushed for democratic reforms to enfranchise their supporters and level the electoral playing field. It was not until the ruling party split, however, that the opposition managed to enact major reforms, which occurred in Chile in 1890 and Uruguay in 1917. In both countries, strong opposition parties played a central role not only in the enactment of the reforms but also in their enforcement.

Chapter 1 lays out the central theoretical arguments of the book. It argues that three factors played a key role in the emergence of democracy in region: the professionalization of the military, the rise of strong opposition parties, and splits within the ruling party. It analyzes what led to the professionalization of the military and the rise of strong opposition parties and it shows how they led to varying regime outcomes in different South American countries. This chapter also discusses why existing theories of democratization cannot fully explain the emergence of democracy in the region

Chapter 8 examines the failed struggle for democracy in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Paraguay during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In contrast to the other South American countries, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Paraguay made relatively little progress in professionalizing their armies in the early twentieth century and were not able to establish a monopoly on violence. As a result, the opposition, especially in Paraguay and Ecuador, continued to seek power via armed revolt, which undermined constitutional rule and encouraged state repression. The weakness of parties in Bolivia and Ecuador also enabled presidents to manipulate elections, resist democratic reforms, and run roughshod over the opposition.

Chapter 6 examines how parties and the military shaped democracy in Argentina and Colombia. Both countries were ruled by authoritarian regimes in the nineteenth century that manipulated elections to remain in power. A strong opposition party, the Radical Civic Union, arose in Argentina in the 1890s and this party initially sought power through armed revolts as well as elections, but the professionalization of the military at the end of the nineteenth century made armed struggle futile. The Radicals pushed for democratic reforms but could not achieve them until a split within the ruling party led dissidents to come to power. After passage of the reforms in 1912, the Radicals won the presidency, but Argentina then lacked a strong opposition party, which undermined democracy in the long run. In Colombia, two strong parties arose during the nineteenth century and whichever party was in the opposition sought power at times via armed revolt. Colombia professionalized its armed forces in the early twentieth century, however, which forced the opposition to abandon the armed struggle. The opposition began to focus on the electoral path to power, but was only able to enact democratic reforms thanks to a split within the ruling party. In the wake of these reforms, Colombian elections became relatively free and fair, but the country's military was not strong enough to contain increasing regional violence, which undermined the country's democracy.

Chapter 7 explores the reasons why Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela experienced relatively stable authoritarianism during the early twentieth century. All three countries professionalized their militaries during this period, which helped bring an end to the frequent revolts that had undermined their prospects for democracy in the nineteenth century. None of the three countries developed strong parties, however. The absence of strong parties impeded democratization in several ways. First, party weakness allowed presidents to concentrate authority and extend their hold on power in some cases. Second, and even more importantly, the weakness of opposition parties meant that the opposition had little chance of winning elections or enacting democratic reforms, particularly in the face of widespread government electoral manipulation. As a result, the opposition frequently abstained from elections, which only deepened authoritarian rule in these countries. In some instances, the opposition also encouraged the military to intervene to overthrow the president, which undermined otherwise mostly stable authoritarian regimes.

Chapter 3 argues that the professionalization of the armed forces played a key role in the emergence of democracy in the region by bringing an end to the opposition revolts that had plagued the region in the nineteenth century. It employs an original database on historical revolts in South America to analyze the evolution of political violence in the region. It shows that revolts were frequent in the nineteenth century and undermined the prospects for democracy by overthrowing elected governments and provoking state repression. Most of these revolts came from opposition groups and other forces outside the state apparatus. At the turn of the century, however, most South American countries professionalized their armed forces with the assistance of foreign missions, which led to a dramatic decline in revolts in the region and helped pave the way for democracy. Nevertheless, a few South American countries failed to take sufficient steps to modernize their militaries and, as a result, they remained highly unstable. A series of regression analyses show that increases in military strength and professionalization are correlated with a decline in outsider revolts, but not insider revolts, during this period.

The Conclusion summarizes the main arguments in the book and discusses to what extent the factors that shaped regime outcomes in the early twentieth century mattered post-1929. It also examines the broader theoretical implications of the book, analyzes the extent to which the arguments work in Mexico and Central America, and lays out an agenda for future research on historical democratization.

In the late eighteenth century, the viceroyalty of New Spain extended its control over Alta California, introducing secular cultural practices like music, dance, and drama which gained popularity among traders, soldiers, and hybrid communities, blurring the traditional boundaries of race, gender, and class. These societal shifts foreshadowed the forthcoming wars of independence (1810–1821) and clashed with missionary liturgy, accentuating the growing divide between monastic orders and secular society. This chapter focuses on the censorship of Fermín de Reygadas’s play, Astucias por heredar, un sobrino a un tío ("Tricks to Inherit: a Nephew and His Uncle"). Initially censored in the viceroyalty, the play was later transported and performed in Alta California, only to be concealed by Hubert Bancroft, who omitted all references to it in his History of California. This play survived two forms of censorship: Spanish colonial moral censorship and Anglo-American disregard towards a text and a performance that did not fit his racialized historiographic narratives. The chapter also explores the play’s staging in Villa de Branciforte near the Santa Cruz mission and concludes by comparing two performances of the play, considering the role of language, location, and early Californio history in contemporary decolonial reenactments.

Reconsidering nineteenth-century Cuban history from the perspective of African-identified people requires that we read Cuban history as tragedy. While there were several important socio-political transitions during Cuba’s long nineteenth century, including slave emancipation in 1886, de-Africanization, or the processes by which colonialists and their successors endeavored to corral, contain, control, co-opt, and eliminate African influences in Cuba persisted well into the twentieth century. Even though these repressive efforts were never fully successful, centering traditional forms of resistance alone leads us to ignore alternative paths/ideas/options that surfaced in response to White supremacy. Simply put, these alternatives garner less attention because they do not fit our narrative constructs and are hard for us to “think.” Centering de-Africanization as process offers a helpful corrective to progressivist and romantic narratives. This essay situates one historical case study in a differently conceived nineteenth-century Cuba to explore forms of resistance that were effectively silenced at the time of their enunciation. In exploring the methodological approaches to understanding this specific case, the essay contributes to a rising trend in Latin American and Latinx studies that centers the importance of Afro-diasporic peoples’ roles in shaping the histories of Latin America and of Latinx experiences in the United States.

Italy shared many similarities with Germany: it was a patchwork of different political entities, economically backward, and divided by the Papal State in the middle. Unification was led by Piedmont, a state that was the Italian counterpart to Prussia. Piedmont’s nation builders were anticlerical liberals. In Italy, the confessional cleavage between state and church was of paramount importance after unification. Rapid liberalization and industrialization brought pauperization, and as in Germany, the religious cleavage added to the capital–labor tensions. Despite these similarities, Italy saw the emergence of a welfare state only half a century after Germany.

Here we will see how a virtuous cycle of ideational competition led to the formation of the world’s first welfare state in late nineteenth-century Germany. In the first part, we will follow nation building and industrialization in nineteenth-century Germany. Industrialization and the confessional cleavage produced a specific political constellation in which the growth of a pauperized working class not only led to a political conflict between capital and labor but also reinforced the existing confessional cleavage between Protestants and Catholics. In the second part, we will see how the cleavages led to a specific cycle of ideational competition between the dominant political forces of the German Empire (Catholicism, conservative Protestantism, liberal Protestantism, and socialism). In the second half of the nineteenth century, they all started to develop modern social security ideas. The development of these ideas paved the way to the formation of the world’s first welfare state. This chapter looks closely at the evolution of German Catholic social thinking, developing from antiquated medieval social ideas to one of the most sophisticated Catholic social security ideologies at the end of the century. The third part of the chapter gives an account of the making of Bismarck’s social security legislation in the 1880s.

This introduction outlines how studying the book trade can help us better understand the circulation of medical knowledge about sex and reproduction during the Victorian period, and the development of busineses, institutions, and narratives that claimed authority over it. Weaving a historiographic overview with an overview of the book’s approach and argument, it turns readers’ attention to medical works’ status as more than texts, highlighting the fact that they are material objects that must be made, promoted, and distributed, and that these actions accrue meanings of their own. It then articulates the book’s focus on the activities of four differently identified groups of players – pornographers, radicals, regular practitioners, and irregular practitioners – who brought sexual knowledge into non-expert readers’ hands and, in various ways, became embroiled in debates about medical obscenity. The introduction then outlines how the book tracks these agents’ intersecting activities to open up an argument about how and why allegations of obscenity became a means of selling books, contesting authority, and consolidating emergent collective identities.

In Victorian times, the family’s problems were viewed by one influential British economist, Alfred Marshall, through the lens of public consternation with urban family impoverishment. Marshall provided a critical extension of the population studies of late eighteenth-century clergyman, T. Robert Malthus, for whom poverty occurred when family reproduction exceeded the capacity of agricultural production. On the one hand, Marshall argued that Malthus had not recognised how larger populations could be sustained by the productivity gains of industrialisation. On the other hand, Marshall extended Malthus’s criticisms of the Old Poor Laws to the New laws too, which were rejected for encouraging poor families to have more children than they could adequately sustain. Marshall also followed Malthus by rejecting calls by Annie Besant, Charles Bradlaugh, and others for working-class access to contraceptive knowledge and birth-control techniques. Describing and evaluating class-based behaviour in factory families, artisanal families, and families of the higher class, Marshall identified the effects on labour productivity and living standards of patterns of family formation, fertility, mortality, household–market labour division, educational investment, and aged care provision. However, his policies supported gendered divides, overlooking how male breadwinning did not convert into an adequate family income, and rejecting activist demands for women’s rights.