Robert L. Scheina

Continuing the story from the companion volume, this is a roughly chronological survey of armed conflicts in 20th century Latin America. The focus tends to be on the operational level, with little on tactics and not very much on the political and socio-economic backgrounds to the wars. One can note though that a very high proportion of the conflicts involve the far left attempting to seize power by force, and that the wars in general tend to be more ideological than in the preceding century.

I liked it well enough. One particular thing that struck me as interesting is that Scheina indirectly blames (and he does seem to feel it’s blame rather than credit that is to be assigned) the Cuban exiles for the survival of the Castro regime, saying that the exodus of hundreds of thousands of middle class people destroyed the social basis for any realistic counterrevolution.… (plus d'informations)

This is a roughly chronological account of about every armed conflict (some can hardly be called "wars") in Latin America from the Haitian Revolution to the Spanish-American War. Each conflict gets a brief background, an account of the fighting - with an operational focus on who went where when rather than battle details - and some concluding remarks about interesting features or underlying causes for the outcome. The mass of detail makes it inevitable that far from everything sticks, but hopefully one retains a general scaffold of the history.

All in all, I found it pretty good.… (plus d'informations)

A very interesting and well researched book, Robert has spent many years trying to find a publisher for this two volume work, luckily Brassey's obliged. As a Professor of History at the National Defense University his area of expertise is Latin American military history, making this work the pinnacle of his research into areas where most historians rarely go. The volume covers many areas in this time frame from a military viewpoint rather than a social or political stance and as such it is a boon to people like myself who are interested in this field of research, a great book for all Latin Amercan military historians and normal military historians wanting to fill in a gap in their knowledge on this area.… (plus d'informations)

Scheina's three books are the best sources in English for an overview of Latin American military history. Each book is well footnoted and has an extensive bibliography. The Naval History volume covers riverine warfare, marine operations, and naval aviation, often overlooked in general naval histories. The earlier Naval History is the better written of the three books. (I suspect Scheina was told that he wouldn't get tenure if his writing continued to be pleasurable to lay readers.) Hagedorn's Latin American Air Wars is the best source for air operations.… (plus d'informations)