This book provides a novel analysis of the military campaign of Rafael Carrera during the popular insurrection of 1837-1840 in Guatemala. Over the course of three years Carrera, a semi-literate farmer, and his army of peasants established Conservative control over Guatemala and accelerated the disintegration of the Central American Federation. Although Carrera's rise has been analyzed from a political and socio-economic perspective, the present work shows that Carrera's vertiginous success is the product of a peculiar and misunderstood approach to warfare that combines guerrilla recruiting practices and rural insurgency logistics with conventional combat tactics and operations. Gilmar Visoni-Alonzo argues that Carrera's hybrid warfare was made possible because of the conditions created by the militarization of Latin American society following the administrative reforms of the Bourbon monarchy in the late eighteenth century. The concept of hybrid warfare is offered as an alternative model to understand the success of other insurgencies.

This book challenges the premise that a 'military revolution' prompted the major European powers to enter into an era of global hegemony during the early modern period, and suggests that this theory is not supported if we closely examine contemporary historical events. The conquests of Mexico and Peru, arguably the two most important colonial acquisitions by a European power during that era, were accomplished without the technology or tactics that are usually associated with the 'military revolution'. On the other hand, Japan, Korea, some Indian states and the Ottoman Empire implemented military reforms, both tactical and technological, that are commonly associated with what was considered an exclusively Western approach to warfare. By comparing case studies of the Western and the non-Western world, Frank Jacob and Gilmar Visoni-Alonzo show that the concept of such a 'military revolution' is a myth perpetuated by a Eurocentric perspective on history.

This book provides a novel analysis of the military campaign of Rafael Carrera during the popular insurrection of 1837-1840 in Guatemala. Over the course of three years Carrera, a semi-literate farmer, and his army of peasants established Conservative control over Guatemala and accelerated the disintegration of the Central American Federation. Although Carrera's rise has been analyzed from a political and socio-economic perspective, the present work shows that Carrera's vertiginous success is the product of a peculiar and misunderstood approach to warfare that combines guerrilla recruiting practices and rural insurgency logistics with conventional combat tactics and operations. Gilmar Visoni-Alonzo argues that Carrera's hybrid warfare was made possible because of the conditions created by the militarization of Latin American society following the administrative reforms of the Bourbon monarchy in the late eighteenth century. The concept of hybrid warfare is offered as an alternative model to understand the success of other insurgencies.