Ensure peace, buy a donkey

0.5 hours writing, 3.5 hours researching, page count = 202

Identified, tracked down, and requested a whole bunch of historical budget documents for my comparative country cases at the library. The New York Public Library has an amazing collection, but many of the historical foreign sources are stored offsite, so those take a couple of days to arrive. In the meantime, I'm going through and making the final polish on the revised Chapter 1.

Read an interesting article on Uruguayan civil wars of the 19th century that points out something very relevant to yesterday's issue of army vs. police firepower. No one had much firepower in the 19th century, and in some respects, the point of civil war was not military victory, but to force the other guy to make a pact and concede you some political power. In Uruguay, this meant mobility, and mobility meant horses. Which side had the best horses generally won, and the fastest way to cripple your opponent was to attack his horse stable. For this reason, a newspaper advertisement in 1903 said, “To save the nation and obtain a splendid and positive profit, buy a magnificent purebred donkey." Peace through donkeys. If only it were so simple....