Empires, States, and the Making of Power I. Coercion, Control, and Extraction in Historical Political Economy

Session Submission Type: Paper Session

Brief Overview

Across states, rulers have long relied on coercion and selective protection to consolidate authority, extract resources, and manage subordinate actors. This panel brings together new empirical and theoretical work on how states and elites negotiate power, repression, and extraction in contexts of weak institutional capacity. Using original historical data that connects governance in colonial Bengal, Peru, Mexico, and the American South, these papers trace state and elite strategies of coercion in shaping the long-term trajectories of political and economic development. Adee Weller examines how the English East India Company in 18th-century Bengal strategically deployed repression and protection to control international leaders, showing how colonial regimes weaponized allies to induce loyalty. Kimberly Renk explores how ordinary subjects constrained rulers' extractive ambitions through flight rather than rebellion, using archival and spatial data from colonial Peru to model the political economy of resistance. Ivan San Miguel and Daniel Baquero investigate how trade shocks generated new classes of politically excluded yet economically powerful elites, sparking revolutionary movements during the Mexican Revolution. Finally, Luke Condra analyzes the intergenerational economic consequences of racial violence in the American South, tracing how exposure to lynchings depressed Black upward mobility across generations. These papers together provide unique theoretical and empirical insight into the enduring logics of coercion and control and their lasting impacts on state development.

Section

• 84. Working Groups (In House)

Chair

• 8:00am |

  Scott Gehlbach, University of Chicago

Individual Presentations

• 8:05am |

  Informal Empire: How Colonial States Coerced International Leaders - Adee Rose Weller, Emory University

• 8:18am |

  Rulers, Resistance, and Refuge: The Historical Political Economy of Extraction - Kimberly June Renk, University of California, San Diego

• 8:31am |

  Joining the Revolution: Elite Support for Revolutionary Movements - Ivan San Miguel, New York University; Daniel Baquero, New York University

• 8:44am |

  An "Epidemic of Mob Law'': The Long-Term Effects of Racial Trauma on Black Children, 1880–1940 - Luke Condra, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Campus; Daniel Jones, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Campus; Randall P. Walsh, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Campus

Discussant

• 8:57am |

  Alexandra Cirone, London School of Economics and Political Science

Audience Participation

• 9:10am |

  Audience participation will last for the remainder of the session.