This detailed local study of state formation in nineteenth-century Mexico focuses on the life of Juan Francisco Lucas, the principal Indian leader of the Puebla Sierra between 1854 and 1917. The book illustrates how, over seventy years, the Indian communities of the Puebla Sierra, through the leadership of Lucas, compelled their political leaders to execute the mandates of the liberal state on terms that were locally acceptable. The text also provides a detailed look at the patriotism, politics, and popular liberalism which flourished during this period in Mexican history. This is the first in-depth study to examine the great nineteenth-century divisions between liberals and conservatives and radical and moderate liberals over an extended time period and in a rural, multi-ethnic setting. The text also explores how these divisions reemerged during the Mexican Revolution. The volume shows the rise of Mexican nationalism and what rights and responsibilities it extended to individual Mexicans and independent communities. Through close attention to the political and human geography of the Puebla Sierra, Professor Thomson observes the continuities between the Sierra's colonial past and the present, and the interactions between key political individuals and a complex physical environment.

Largely absent from our history books is the social history of railroad development in nineteenth-century Mexico, which promoted rapid economic growth that greatly benefited elites but also heavily impacted rural and provincial Mexican residents in communities traversed by the rails. In this beautifully written and original book, Teresa Van Hoy connects foreign investment in Mexico, largely in railroad development, with its effects on the people living in the isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico's region of greatest ethnic diversity. Students will be drawn to a fascinating cast of characters, as muleteers, artisans, hacienda peons, convict laborers, dockworkers, priests, and the rural police force (rurales) join railroad regulars in this rich social history. New empirical evidence, some drawn from two private collections, elaborates on the huge informal economy that supported railroad development. Railroad officials sought to gain access to local resources such as land, water, construction materials, labor, customer patronage, and political favors. Residents, in turn, maneuvered to maximize their gains from the wages, contracts, free passes, surplus materials, and services (including piped water) controlled by the railroad. Those areas of Mexico suffering poverty and isolation attracted public investment and infrastructure. A Social History of Mexico's Railroads is the dynamic story of the people and times that were changed by the railroads and is sure to engage students and general readers alike.

Although Mexico began its national life in the 1821 as one of the most liberal democracies in the world, it ended the century with an authoritarian regime. Examining this defining process, distinguished historians focus on the evolution of Mexican liberalism from the perspectives of politics, the military, the Church, and the economy. Based on extensive archival research, the chapters demonstrate that--despite widely held assumptions--liberalism was not an alien ideology unsuited to Mexico's traditional, conservative, and multiethnic society. On the contrary, liberalism in New Spain arose from Hispanic culture, which drew upon a shared European tradition reaching back to ancient Greece. This volume provides the first systematic exploration of the evolution of Mexican liberal traditions in the nineteenth century. The chapters assess the changes in liberal ideology, the nature of federalism, efforts to create stability with a liberal monarchy in the 1860s, the Church's accommodation to the new liberal order, the role of the army and of the civil militias, the liberal tax system, and attempts to modernize the economy in the latter part of the century. Taken together, these essays provide a nuanced and comprehensive analysis of the transformation of liberalism in Mexico. Contributions by: Christon I. Archer, William H. Beezley, Marcello Carmagnani, Manuel Chust, Brian Connaughton, Robert H. Duncan, Aldo Flores-Quiroga, Alicia Hernández Chávez, Sandra Kuntz Ficker, Andrés Reséndez, Jaime E. Rodríguez O., and José Antonio Serrano Ortega

The twin focus of this book is on the importance of the Spanish heritage on nation and state building in nineteenth-century Spanish-speaking Latin America, alongside processes of nation and state building in Spain and Latin America. Rather than concentrating purely on nationalism and national identity, the book explores the linkages that remained or were re-established between Spain and her former colonies; as has increasingly been recognised in recent decades, the nineteenth century world was marked by the rise of the modern nation state, but also by the development of new transnational connections, and this book accounts for these processes within a Hispanic context.

Dr Butler provides a new interpretation of the cristero war (1926-29) which divided Mexico's peasantry into rival camps loyal to the Catholic Church (cristero) or the Revolution (agrarista). This book puts religion at the heart of our understanding of the revolt by showing how peasant allegiances often resulted from genuinely popular cultural and religious antagonisms. It challenges the assumption that Mexican peasants in the 1920s shared religious outlooks and that their behaviour was mainly driven by political and material factors. Focusing on the state of Michoacán in western-central Mexico, the volume seeks to integrate both cultural and structural lines of inquiry. First charting the uneven character of Michoacán's historical formation in the late colonial period and the nineteenth century, Dr Butler shows how the emergence of distinct agrarian regimes and political cultures was later associated with varying popular responses to post-revolutionary state formation in the areas of educational and agrarian reform. At the same time, it is argued that these structural trends were accompanied by increasingly clear divergences in popular religious cultures, including lay attitudes to the clergy, patterns of religious devotion and deviancy, levels of sacramental participation, and commitment to militant 'social' Catholicism. As peasants in different communities developed distinct parish identities, so the institutional conflict between Church and state acquired diverse meanings and provoked violently contradictory popular responses. Thus the fires of revolt burned all the more fiercely because they inflamed a countryside which - then as now - was deeply divided in matters of faith as well as politics. Based on oral testimonies and careful searches of dozens of ecclesiastical and state archives, this study makes an important contribution to the religious history of the Mexican Revolution.

The political conflict during Mexico's Reform era in the mid-nineteenth century was a visceral battle between ideologies and people from every economic and social class. As Popular Politics and Rebellion in Mexico develops the story of this struggle, the role of one key rebel, Manuel Lozada, comes into focus. The willingness of rural peasants to take up arms to defend the Catholic Church and a conservative political agenda explains the bitterness of the War of Reform and the resulting financial and political toll that led to the French Intervention. Exploring the activities of rural Jalisco's residents in this turbulent era and Lozada's unique position in the drama, Brittsan reveals the deep roots of colonial religious and landholding practices, exemplified by Lozada, that stood against the dominant political current represented by Benito Juarez and liberalism. Popular Politics and Rebellion in Mexico also explores the conditions under which a significant segment of Mexican society aligned itself with conservative interests and French interlopers, revealing this constituency to be more than a collection of reactionary traitors to the nation. To the contrary, armed rebellion--or at least the specter of force--protected local commercial interests in the short run and enhanced the long-term prospects for political autonomy. Manuel Lozada's story adds a necessary layer of complexity to our understanding of the practical and ideological priorities that informed the tumultuous conflicts of the mid-nineteenth century.