Since diplomacy can rarely be more effective than the degree of strength and independence of the country conducting it, historians in the past have regarded study of the relations of the Mexican Empire of Maximilian with other states as an exercise in futility. Professor Blumberg has seen it otherwise. Noting that Maximilian’s Empire had an operating foreign ministry and a diplomatic corps in Europe, he attempts to document every official contact between Mexico and other governments and suggests that if the Emperor Maximilian had been more skillful in the art of international intercourse, he might have maintained himself in Mexico independent, or nearly so, of outside aid.
Professor Blumberg cannot be faulted for lack of industry. He has obtained, usually on microfilm or photostats, documents from the archives of all of the governments which had permanent diplomatic missions in Mexico with the exception of Spain and the Holy See. His bibliography, which will be a boon to other seekers in the field, shows how much can be done in the way of European archival research without leaving the United States. Much of the material is filed in the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress or the National Archives. For diplomatic correspondence not available in reproduction, such as the Italian and Portuguese documents, he relied on the good offices of scholars and diplomats abroad to make appropriate excerpts.
The result of this scholarly activity is a contribution of very modest proportions to our knowledge of the Empire and the reasons for its demise. Much of the book is given over to dotting the “i”s and crossing the “t”s of well known events and exhumation of detail whose inconsequentiality is obvious. Throughout the book times of arrival and departure of personages are reported with great punctiliousness even though the knowledge serves no ascertainable purpose. Receptions for diplomats, regardless of the importance of the legation in question, are described with a meticulous eye for protocol. We are informed of if not edified by, for example, the names of the numerous grand crosses, collars, and other orders exchanged, of the absence or presence of honor guards, and even the number of horses that drew the coaches of the diplomats to the audiences of accreditation.
Of more substance is the study of Maximilian’s diplomatic relations with his brother, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. Maximilian’s inept profession of friendship to the King of Italy, Austria’s enemy in the Seven Weeks War, exacerbated the unresolved question of his future position in Europe should he be obliged to leave Mexico, and may have influenced his decision to refuse to abdicate. Also, the role of United States Secretary of State Seward in escorting France out of Mexico is refined if not revised by the description of his deceptively sympathetic attitude toward the Mexican Empire until he was in a position, after the termination of the Civil War, to use force to restore the Mexican Republic.
On the fundamental question of the viability of the Empire in Mexico, Professor Blumberg can offer no more than a catalogue of Maximilian’s errors and shortcomings coupled with the opinion that a conservative and clerical regime, even if guided by a foreigner, had a real chance of success, a view with which few historians of Mexico would agree. If only, Rlumberg concludes, Maximilian had seized “enthusiastically the baton of leadership once held by Santa Anna. Miramón, and Márquez,” he might have “prospered in Mexico” and avoided dependence on France. What a triumvirate to hold up to Maximilian for his emulation! Few men in the annals of Mexican history have been as unpopular and as unsuccessful. Blumberg himself later notes that they were “stained with treason, self-service, and double dealing.” That he should have chosen them for his prototypes perhaps illustrates the futility of any effort to demonstrate that the continuation of the Mexican Empire was within the realm of possibility.
