Trace Mexico’s dramatic journey from colony to independent nation.
Eric Van Young is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. His book include The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810-1821, winner of the 2002 Bolton-Johnson Prize.
Elegant and incisive as ever, Eric Van Young takes his readers
through the scarring wars, decapitalization, traumatic territorial
loss, fiscal penury, and internal strife that marked Mexico's
century-long transition from Spanish colony to independent liberal
republic. It is a magisterial narrative of a society's struggle for
an ever-elusive nationhood, political legitimacy, and internal
development that rejects tired tropes of inevitable failure,
corruption, and irrevocable colonial predestinations so often
invoked in histories of Latin America and instead focuses on
soberly analyzing what was sought and what was possible in the
shadow of an expansive United States. A must-read for anyone
seeking to understand the limits of decolonization in modern
Mexico.
Excitingly, Van Young's book provides, for the very first time, a
compelling overview of Mexico during the so-called Age of
Democratic Revolutions (1750-1850). That he has been able to do
this says much about how much attention the period in question has
attracted since 1993, but it also speaks volumes of Van Young's own
lifelong career as a Mexicanist and a historian and his painstaking
research into the hacienda economy of colonial Mexico, the crisis
of the colonial order, the War of Independence (1810-21), and the
eventful and remarkable career of so-called father of Mexican
conservatism Lucas Alam�n (1792-1853).[3] Without the last three
decades of research into the period and Van Young's own vast
encyclopedic knowledge of it, this book could never have been
written. This is an outstanding piece of synthesis. It offers a
perfect introductory overview of everything that was important in
Mexico between 1750 and 1850. Hands down, this is the best
introduction to Mexico's history from colony to republic that
anyone can buy.
Stormy Passage offers us a deeply thoughtful narrative about the
enduring significance of Mexican history by one of its most
committed scholars. Using the metaphors of tempests and storms,
Eric Van Young addresses the dual problems of modernization and
decolonization from the entwined perspectives of imperial hegemony,
state formation, and the internal development of Mexican society.
Organized in three parts, the book mirrors the life of statesman
and historian Lucas Alam�n during the crucial century of transition
between colonialism and the Mexican nation, as subjects became
citizens in a complex social mosaic of Indigenous peoples,
Afro-Mexicans, and ethnically mixed strata of diverse economic and
cultural lifeways.
This book is a wonderful, confident, readable interpretation of a
period in Mexican history to which Eric Van Young has devoted his
distinguished career. It could take the place of a textbook in any
class on Mexican history because of its scope, even as its
interpretive edges give students much to chew on and debate. It
should also find an audience beyond the classroom among non-experts
who are interested in Mexico. Scholars will have the greatest
admiration for the depth of knowledge and the keen, mature
historical sensibility that shines in every page.
This is an outstanding piece of synthesis. It offers a perfect
introductory overview of everything that was important in Mexico
between 1750 and 1850. This is, hands down, the best introduction
to Mexico's history from colony to republic that anyone can
buy.
Van Young, a noted Mexicanist, here details a century of Mexican
history, spanning 1750-1850. He focuses on Mexico's often stormy
transition from colony to nation and posits that his contribution
is more of an "extended interpretive synthetic essay" than a
general survey text. This is an apt way to cast the title as it is
expansive in scope yet offers significant insight from a noted
scholar who has made a career of studying this period. The work is
friendly to readers who may have minimal historical knowledge of
Mexico's past, and the analysis and compact nature of the narrative
offers more advanced students and scholars new ways in which to
interpret this critical period. There is much to unpack, ranging
from decolonization and the impact on Mexican society to the
successes and failures of modernization. Van Young's work has a
place on the bookshelves of anyone interested in Latin American or
Mexican history. It can also serve as a core or supplemental text
for relevant courses. Recommended.
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