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The Birth of Modern Mexico, 1780-1824 investigates the roots of the Mexican Independence era from a variety of perspectives. The essays in this volume link the pre-1810 late Bourbon period to the War of Independence (1810-1821), analyze many crucial aspects of the decade of conflict, and illustrate the continuities with the first years of the independent Mexican nation. They all contribute to a nuanced view of the period: the different conceptions of legitimacy between the popular masses and the elite, the skill and importance of pro-Spanish propaganda, the process of organizing conspiracies, the survival and thriving of a mercantile family, the causes of failing mines, the role of religious thought in the supposed secular state, and differing conceptions of authority by the legislature and the executive. One of the few readable, concise books on the topic of independence, this volume probes the birth of modern Mexico in a crisply written style that is sure to appeal to historians and students of Mexican history.
Green offers a colorful acccount of the first decade of Mexican independence from Spain. He views the failed attempt to establish a strong republic and the subsequent civil war that plagued the young nation. From this first decade, two polarized factions emerged, one federalist and populist, the other attempted to keep much of the old order of authroitarianism and church power established under colonialism. The were to be called the Liberals and the Conservatives, who would vie for power over the next century.
The 1929 master's thesis of folklorist, Jovita Gonzalez has served as source material on the Texas-Mexican borderlands for more than seventy-five years but has never before been published. When Gonzalez decided to pursue a master's degree in history from the University of Texas, she was already the vice-president and president-elect of the Texas Folklore Society. Despite this, she wrote a defiant master's thesis that offered a competing vision of Texas history and culture to that promoted by the founding fathers of Texas folklore. Her complex analysis de-emphasizes the role of the Texas Revolution in Texas history and explores the ways in which Anglos and Mexicans developed tense ties following the U.S.-Mexico War. Her approach to Texas history elegantly counters the rhetoric of dominance of the established historians of the American West of her time. Gonzalez's thesis is now available for the first time to a wider reading public, especially those who value a Tejana legacy that presents the borderlands as a crucible in which a new kind of identity is being formed.
A Mexican literary and political figure of the early nineteenth century whose writings present the best existing portrayal of Spanish colonial society.
Winner of the Arthur P. Whitaker Prize as "the best book in Latin American Studies in 1990-1991Mexico's colonial experience had left a bitter legacy. Many believed that only the physical removal of the old colonial elite could allow the creation of a new political and economic order. While expulsion seemed to provide the answer, the expulsion decrees met stiff resistance and caused a tug-of-war between enforcement and evasion that went on for years. Friendship, family influence, intrigue, and bribery all played a role in determining who left and who stayed. After years of struggle, the movement died down, but not until three-quarters of Mexico's peninsulares had been forced to leave. Expulsion had the effect of crippling a once flourishing economy, with the flight of significant capital.
Part I. The balance of order and disorder -- 1. Ambitious bandits: disorder equals progress -- 2. The aura of the king -- 3. The spoils of independence -- 4. Bent on being modern -- 5. Bandits into police, and vice versa -- Part II. Toward the Western model -- 6. Order, disorder, and development -- 7. The limits to dictatorship -- 8. A kind of peace -- Part III. A political police performance -- 9. Constabulary of campesinos and artisans -- 10. The president's police -- 11. It's the image that counts -- Part IV. Demons of revolution unleashed -- 12. The rollercoaster called capitalism-- 13. Unraveling the old regime -- 14. Disorder in search of order.
Germán Vergara explains how, when, and why fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) became the basis of Mexican society.
Mexico and the United States each have a constitution and a federal system of government. This fact has led many historians to assume that the Mexican system of government, established in the 1820s, is an imitation of the U.S. model. But it is not. In this interpretation of the independence movement, Nettie Lee Benson tells the true story of Mexico's transition from colonial status to a federal state. She traces the Mexican government's beginning to events in Spain in 1808–1810, when provincial juntas, or deputations, were established to oppose Napoleon's French rule and govern the country during the Spanish monarch's imprisonment. These provincial deputations proved so popular that ultima...