On the Periphery is a welcome contribution to regional historiography for northwestern Mexico during the formative period of the national republic. Basically a political history of the dominant class, Voss’s study centers on the “urban notables” who vie with each other for control of state and district offices, their rivalry centered around the governorship. Socioeconomic data are well researched and used to supplement the political narrative, but not employed as the integrative element that could explain the historical development of a society in formation. The book is structured as a comparative study of Sonora and Sinaloa, rich in information, though not always balanced in treatment because of the generally more abundant sources for Sonora.
The author makes excellent use of local newspapers for the period as well as microfilmed archival collections and not easily accessible regional bibliography; however, he relies heavily on English travel journals and foreign consular reports for descriptive data. His research could have been enriched by consulting directly local and regional archives (state, episcopal, municipal, and parish), the Archivo General de la Nación s holdings for nineteenth-century Mexico (recently made accessible), and the archives of the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores. In interpretive historiography, Voss refers to well-known North American authors, but his conclusions could have been strengthened had he placed his study within the framework of recent socioeconomic syntheses published in Mexico on nineteenth-century national development and taken into account recently published research on the region.
On the Periphery provides good treatment of the Apache question and the resistance of Indian communities to the loss of land and water rights to private landholders. Voss handles well education as an indicator of social development. In the earlier chapters he provides a convincing explanation of the regional application of federalist and centralist arguments; however, for the restoration period the author paraphrases Pes-queirista arguments taken from Sonoran state newspapers on federalism versus centralism at the national, state, and local levels. The problem is couched in fiscal terms and in reference to military defense, but not related critically to the economic interests of the “notables,” whose perspective is still local regarding productive capacity and commercial outlets.
Voss criticizes the performance of the Sonora and Sinaloa state legislatures, yet does not complete his analysis of the relationship between politics and private gain. As he implies, but does not make explicit, commerce is the main source for the accumulation of wealth, the prime concern of the ruling class. The final chapters are more narrative than analytic in discussing the regional-national dichotomy and the fundamental contradictions in applying liberal ideology to prevailing social structure: government is at all times oligarchical, for the popular classes do not participate openly in the struggle for power.
The present reader finds that two arguments basic to Voss’s history bear discussion. First, the characterization of Sonoran society as urban during the first half of the nineteenth century: although the leading families prefer to live in an urban environment and, more important, Hermosillo and Guaymas dominate commerce and the state’s economy, it can be argued that the centers of production and the working population are concentrated in mining camps, haciendas, and ranches—all in the rural sector. Second, the author’s interpretation of periphery or frontier as opposed to the center: he implies, through the triumph of Porfirista adherents in the region and in prediction of Sonoran participation in the Revolution, that the northwest enters fully into national politics and society as the nineteenth century draws to a close. It can be argued, however, that the northwest remains on the frontier, its economic development of the Porfirian period due largely to United States investment and markets. Finally, the comparative presentation of Sonora and Sinaloa is not brought to a conclusion in terms of the similarities and major differences between these two regional societies.
In summary, On the Periphery is a carefully woven, historical narrative, scrupulously attentive to detail. The argument could have been strengthened by the explicit statement of hypotheses regarding the formation of class interests and the integration of the northwest into international markets before the consolidation of a national market in Mexico.
