This multilayered study of the railroad industry in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz focuses on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book is well researched and based on a broad array of archival sources from Mexico, the United States, and Great Britain. Its title is somewhat misleading since this study is as much a social history as it is a top-down economic history of railroad construction and operation. Emphasis is evenly placed on federal officials, railroad developers, and local residents (that is, “ordinary” smallholders, workers, passengers, and freight customers). The author is rightly critical of earlier scholars for their elite-centered studies of Mexico’s railroads and their “zero sum” arguments, most notably that the gains made by the elite from the railroads came at the expense of the poor. In this account, Mexico’s popular groups are appropriately portrayed as active agents who frequently...
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