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.

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

No struggle has been more contentious or of longer duration in Mexican national history than that between a centripetal power in the capital and the centrifugal federalism of the Mexican states. Much as they do in the United States, such tensions still endure in Mexico, despite the centralising effect of the Mexican Revolution of 1910–20. Timothy E. Anna turns his attention upon the crucial postindependence period of 1821–35 to understand both the theoretical and the practical causes of the development of this polarity. He attempts to determine how much influence can be ascribed to such causes as the model of the United States, the effect of European thinkers, and the shifting self-interest of various leaders and groups in Mexican society. The result is a nuanced and thoughtful analysis of the development of one of the defining characteristics of the Mexican nation: regional power and sovereignty of the state. Forging Mexico, 1821–1835 is a study both of the political history of the first republic and of the struggle to forge nationhood. Timothy E. Anna is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Manitoba. His books include The Fall of the Royal Government in Mexico City and The Mexican Empire of Iturbide.

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.

Peasant and Nation offers a major new statement on the making of national politics. Comparing the popular political cultures and discourses of postcolonial Mexico and Peru, Florencia Mallon provides a groundbreaking analysis of their effect on the evolution of these nation states. As political history from a variety of subaltern perspectives, the book takes seriously the history of peasant thought and action and the complexity of community politics. It reveals the hierarchy and the heroism, the solidarity and the surveillance, the exploitation and the reciprocity, that coexist in popular political struggle. With this book Mallon not only forges a new path for Latin American history but challenges the very concept of nationalism. Placing it squarely within the struggles for power between colonized and colonizing peoples, she argues that nationalism must be seen not as an integrated ideology that puts the interest of the nation above all other loyalties, but as a project for collective identity over which many political groups and coalitions have struggled. Ambitious and bold, Peasant and Nation both draws on monumental archival research in two countries and enters into spirited dialogue with the literatures of post-colonial studies, gender studies, and peasant studies.

Spanish Dollars and Sister Republics traces the linked history of the new nations of Mexico and the United States from the 1770s to the 1860s. Tatiana Seijas and Jake Frederick highlight the common challenges facing both countries in their early decades of independence by exploring the creation of coin money. The remarkable story begins when both countries chose the Spanish piece of eight (silver coin) as their monetary standard. The authors examine how each nation instituted its own currency, designed coins to represent its national ideals, and then spent decades trying to establish the legitimacy of its money. Readers learn about the creation and circulation of money through the stories of a banker in Philadelphia, a Mexican general in Texas, a surveyor in Sonora, and others. The focus on individuals provides an engaging window into the economic history of Mexico and the United States. Seijas and Frederick show how the creation of U.S. dollars and Mexican pesos paralleled these countries’ efforts to establish enduring political and economic systems, illustrating why these nations closed the nineteenth century on very different historical trajectories.

This account of the history of Mexico from Independence to the Revolution traces the struggle of common people to exert control over their everyday lives.