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Non-Western Warfare Never Existed

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No. 23 (2024): October-March. Dossier: War and representation in Latin America. 19th-21st centuries
https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-4862.2024.76347
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Abstract

As in the rest of the human sciences, those of us who have specialized in the study of war, know that the origin of the concepts, theories and methodologies that have cemented our disciplines originated in western academies, thus obeying the parameters, needs and expectations of the West itself. This may not be a problem for specialists in contemporary warfare, but for those of us who have focused our studies on conflicts between ancient societies outside the West, in my case, in pre-Hispanic Amerindian societies, it is a major problem. When the West generates standards of war, and from them creates a classification of the Western and non-Western, based basically on the opposition between the secular, advanced and complex, versus the ritual, primitive and incipient; fallacies have arisen about the warfare that occurred between pre-Columbian Amerindian societies and in any other region outside the borders of the West. For in trying to frame their warfare in a disparate and completely alien referential framework, much of the ontological reality of war, as a cultural and social phenomenon, has been lost. Thus, this essay seeks to recognize the origins of the problem, point out its inappropriateness and point to a new path.

Keywords:

Western way of war, non-Western way of war, history of warfare, decoloniality
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How to Cite
Rivera Acosta, G. (2024). Non-Western Warfare Never Existed. Meridional. Revista Chilena De Estudios Latinoamericanos, (23), 57–79. https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-4862.2024.76347
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Meridional. Revista Chilena de Estudios Latinoamericanos
Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades
Universidad de Chile
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