Popular Politics and Rebellion in Mexico: Manuel Lozada and La Reforma, 1855–1876

This book offers the first major study in English of Manuel Lozada, the larger-than-life leader of a rural rebellion in the western Mexican state of Jalisco (which at the time also encompassed present-day Nayarit) that spanned two decades and counted more than 7,000 people among its ranks. As such, the book draws on and contributes to the burgeoning historiography on popular responses to the grand political conflicts of nineteenth-century Mexico, whose major concern has been to understand how, why, and to what extent ordinary people joined the liberal or conservative sides of the ideological divide. In this respect, Zachary Brittsan's study of a prominent conservative peasant leader—only surpassed in importance by General Tomás Mejía of Querétaro—is a healthy corrective to the rather-notorious emphasis on popular federalisms and liberalisms in the historiography. As the author notes in the introduction, many rural rebellions occurred...