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Violence and American Statebuilding, 1860-1895 https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.129179 Wood, Hugh Gerstle, gary Theorists of the American state have neglected how private forms of violence—frontier marauders, corporate militias, and lynching communities—have established and maintained US government power at the local, state, and national level. This dissertation’s three case studies correct that tendency. They explore how American statebuilders deployed, sanctioned, or turned a blind eye toward private actors conducting violence that aligned with overarching state priorities including territorial expansion, industrial discipline, and the generation of racial order. The dissertation narrates an ideological and institutional story centred on ascertaining whether the US was invested in maintaining a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence, per the theory of Max Weber, or whether it represented a different kind of state entirely. Its answer rests in the latter camp: the US was not a Weberian state and demands a novel theory of violence grounded in historical research. University of Cambridge 2025-08-22 Thesis Doctoral Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) eng https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/401289 embargo 2027-04-15 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/b49e7ddb-8a20-41e8-92ff-4dcc4c39f9a6/download 04d2f4e7dd32c3d776638cbec3c628b9 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/c3dbaade-81d3-4b8b-9937-8052f3cee73b/download 87eda9de84448d1f82354d60eee3eb5f http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved American Political Development Statebuilding Violence