Lucas Alaman Mexican Conservatism And The United States

An eminent historian's biography of one of Mexico's most prominent statesmen, thinkers, and writers Lucas Alamán (1792-1853) was the most prominent statesman, political economist, and historian in nineteenth-century Mexico. Alamán served as the central ministerial figure in the national government on three occasions, founded the Conservative Party in the wake of the Mexican-American War, and authored the greatest historical work on Mexico's struggle for independence. Though Mexican historiography has painted Alamán as a reactionary, Van Young's balanced portrait draws upon fifteen years of research to argue that Alamán was a conservative modernizer, whose north star was always economic development and political stability as the means of drawing Mexico into the North Atlantic world of advanced nation-states. Van Young illuminates Alamán's contribution to the course of industrialization, advocacy for scientific development, and unerring faith in private property and institutions such as church and army as anchors for social stability, as well as his less commendable views, such as his disdain for popular democracy.

Concise Encyclopedia of Mexico includes approximately 250 articles on the people and topics most relevant to students seeking information about Mexico. Although the Concise version is a unique single-volume source of information on the entire sweep of Mexican history-pre-colonial, colonial, and moderns-it will emphasize events that affecting Mexico today, event students most need to understand.

Examines the history and culture of Mexico and its relations with its neighbors to the north and east from the Spanish Conquest to the current presidency of Vicente Fox.

Examines the Mexican-American War from both sides, discussing its impact on both countries at the time and generations later, as well as how it has shaped U.S.-Mexico relations.

Essential essays from “one of the most prolific, provocative, and pre-eminent historians working in the field of Mexican and Latin-American history today” (Susan Deans-Smith, author of Bureaucrats, Planters, and Workers). This collection brings together a group of important and influential essays on Mexican history and historiography by Eric Van Young, a leading scholar in the field. The essays, several of which appear here in English for the first time, are primarily historiographical; that is, they address the ways in which separate historical literatures have developed over time. They cover a wide range of topics: the historiography of the colonial and nineteenth-century Mexican and Latin American countryside; historical writing in English on the history of colonial Mexico; British, American, and Mexican historical writing on the Mexican Independence movement; the methodology of regional and cultural history; and the relationship of cultural to economic history. Some of the essays have been and will continue to be controversial, while others—for example, those on studies of the Mexican hacienda since 1980, on the theory and method of regional history, and on the “new cultural history” of Mexico—are widely considered classics of the genre. “Van Young is one of the two or three preeminent thinkers in the Mexican and Latin American field whose essays are of such pioneering and enduring value to warrant this kind of greatest hits collection. Not only does he cross fields and disciplines and integrate northern and southern intellectual currents, his essays are a pleasure to read and constitute a rare combination of analytical bite, erudition, and playfulness.” —Gilbert M. Joseph, Yale University

As oil-rich Mexico faces the 1980s, conflicts between agrarian populism and capitalist industrialization call for resolution. The internal peace and political stability that made the period between the late 1930s and the early 1970s so productive left many Mexicans—particularly the campesinos—marginal to the benefits of the economy. During this period of economic growth, agrarian reform, the trademark of the Mexican revolution, was relegated to a position of lesser importance in national politics. But with forty percent of the population still remaning in the countryside, it is clear that programs for rural development and land redistribution must again be given prominence. In this study of Sonora—a key agricultural state in northwestern Mexico—Steven E. Sanderson examines in economic and political terms the post-revolutionary rise of agrarian reform and its decline, dividing the sixty years of change (from 1917 to 1976) into three periods. Agrarian populism dominated the first, which he calls a time of post-revolutionary consolidation (1917–1940). Then, during the "miracle years" of 1940–1970, the growing strength of capital and the success of state-led import substitution plans led to a counterreform in agrarian politics. In the final period, that of President Echeverria's populist resurgence (1970–1976), ambitious but flawed agrarian reform plans clashed with the sector that favored the increasing concentration of land, income, and political influence. Sonora provides a particularly interesting view of these developments because of its political and geographical distance from metropolitan Mexico, its rich history of independence, its economic growth since the revolution, and the political sophistication of its residents. The events in this state exemplify the regional imbalances, the ideological biases, and the political manipulations contributing to the crisis in state legitimacy that dominated Mexican politics in the 1970s. Using a combination of agrarian census materials, state archives, newspapers, records from relevant ministries, and selected interviews with participants, Sanderson presents the complex history of conflict between the political base supporting agrarian reform and the economic forces advocating industrialization and economic growth. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

This book is a study of the political development of the many factions that surfaced in Mexico from the achievement of independence in 1821 to General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna's last government in 1853-55. Paying particular attention to the writings of the main thinkers of the period and the ways in which they inspired or were betrayed by their respective factions, this volume concentrates on the evolution of the different factions (traditionalists, moderates, radicals, and santanistas), who sustained their beliefs at one point or another. It follows a chronological approach and puts significant emphasis to the way the hopes of the 1820s degenerated into the despair of the 1840s, and how these in turn affected the evolution of the different factions' political proposals. Political proposals and ideologies were important in independent Mexico; it was an age of proposals. Various constitutional projects were proposed, discussed, attempted, or dismissed. This study offers a comprehensive analysis of how the generalized liberal principles of early republican Mexico became fractured into numerous conflicting political proposals and movements. In response to the ever-changing political landscape of the new nation, the emergent Mexican political class was prevented from achieving the ever-evasive constitutional order, unity, progress, and stability all dreamed of experiencing when General Agustin de Iturbide marched into Mexico City on September 27, 1821. Appendices with a glossary, chronologies, and description of major personalities are included.