After many years of researching and writing about Venezuelan history, I recently shifted my focus to Chile during the late colonial and early republican eras (c.1760-c.1860).  My current project examines the tax farming system used to collect the tithe and excise taxes.  I'm interested in how these practices shaped relations between the state and society and how, following independence, they were modified in response to critiques rooted in liberal republicanism.

Select Publications

Books:  Profitable Offices: Corruption, Anticorruption, and the Formation of Venezuela's Neopatrimonial State, 1908-1948 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025)

A Coffee Frontier: Land, Society and Politics in Duaca Venezuela, 1830-1936 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997).

Refereed Articles:

"Public Opinion and Modernity in Venezuela’s Anti-Corruption Trials, 1945-1948," Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 51 no. 1 (2019): 59-83.

“Venezuelan Presidents’ Discretionary Payments to Allies and Followers: Neopatrimonialism and Gray Corruption, 1919-1948,” Südost-Forschungen, vol. 77 (2018): 95-120.

"Tax Farming, Liquor and the Quest for Fiscal Modernity in Venezuela, 1908-1935," Hispanic American Historical Review vol. 94 no. 2 (2014): 237-267.

"Political Transition in an Age of Extremes: Venezuela in the 1930s," in Paulo Drinot and Alan Knight eds., The Great Depression in Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press 2014) 160-187.

"Cattle, Corruption and State Formation in Venezuela during the Regime of Juan Vicente Gomez, 1908-1935,"  Latin American Research Review vol. 38 no. 2 (2003): 9-33.

"The Vestey Cattle Enterprise and the Regime of Juan Vicente Gomez, 1908-1935," Journal of Latin American Studies vol. 35 (2003): 89-115.