Following conflicting desires for an Aztec crown, this book explores the possibilities of repatriation. In The Contested Crown, Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll meditates on the case of a spectacular feather headdress believed to have belonged to Montezuma, emperor of the Aztecs. This crown has long been the center of political and cultural power struggles, and it is one of the most contested museum claims between Europe and the Americas. Taken to Europe during the conquest of Mexico, it was placed at Ambras Castle, the Habsburg residence of the author’s ancestors, and is now in Vienna’s Welt Museum. Mexico has long requested to have it back, but the Welt Museum uses science to insist it is too fragile to travel. Both the biography of a cultural object and a history of collecting and colonizing, this book offers an artist’s perspective on the creative potentials of repatriation. Carroll compares Holocaust and colonial ethical claims, and she considers relationships between indigenous people, international law and the museums that amass global treasures, the significance of copies, and how conservation science shapes collections. Illustrated with diagrams and rare archival material, this book brings together global history, European history, and material culture around this fascinating object and the debates about repatriation.

A VIVID AND DRAMATIC STORY OF LOVE, CONFLICT AND REBELLION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY MEXICO In the late 1860’s the royal families of Europe collaborated with the French in an ingenious plan to take over Mexico. They set up Maximilian von Hapsburg and his wife Carlóta as the Emperor and Empress of Mexico. In accepting this crown Maximilian bowed to the ambitions of his wife, a disturbed yet disturbingly beautiful woman. Unfortunately Maximilian was inept as a ruler and the whole adventure ended in disaster as the people of Mexico, led by Juarez, rose to overthrow him. Told against a background of imperial splendour and ever increasing tension, this novel has three themes—the making of a girl into a woman, the making of a man into a doctor, and the making of a nation—developed through the stories of two young Americans, Dr. Andrew Lorimer and his sister Sally, and Pierre Franchet, a soldier in the French Expeditionary Corps. The Cactus and the Crown, which was first published in 1962, is an exceptionally well-researched historical novel from Catherine Gavin, set during the beginnings of the Mexican nation, when Maximilian was Emperor and the guerrilla forces of Benito Juarez were fighting against French troops.

Senora B. Leonarz de Harding specialized in popular tales of kings and queens. In this volume, she tells the story of Maximilian and Carlota of Mexico.

The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire is a sweeping historical novel of Mexico during the short, tragic, at times surreal, reign of Emperor Maximilian and his court. Even as the American Civil War raged north of the border, a clique of Mexican conservative exiles and clergy convinced Louis Napoleon to invade Mexico and install the Archduke of Austria, Maximilian von Habsburg, as Emperor. A year later, the childless Maximilian took custody of the two year old, half-American, Prince Agustìn de Iturbide y Green, making the toddler the Heir Presumptive. Maximilian’s reluctance to return the child to his distraught parents, even as his empire began to fall, and the Empress Carlota descended into madness, ignited an international scandal. This lush, grand read is based on the true story and illuminates both the cultural roots of Mexico and the political development of the Americas. But it is made all the more captivating by the depth of Mayo’s writing and her understanding of the pressures and influences on these all too human players.

This is a new release of the original 1962 edition.