Stanley Green’s The Mexican Republic is part of the rediscovery of the early postindependence period in Mexican history. Once neglected by historians who dismissed it as a laughable opéra bouffe (in Lesley Byrd Simpson’s phrase), the early republic has recently become the focus of serious attention from scholars who realize that it was the pivotal time when many characteristics of the later nineteenth century were forged.
Green has not attempted to produce a new interpretation of the period; instead he has written a narrative history of the first decade, melding nineteenth-century accounts with modern monographs and his own sampling of archival records to provide an updated “panoramic view” of Mexico from A to Z. He places considerable emphasis on the A (Lucas Alamán) and the Z (Lorenzo de Zavala), the two figures he considers representative of opposing tendencies in political thought. In between are descriptions of major cities, regional economies, the class system, social customs, education, the press, government and ecclesiastical structures, and —the bulk of the work—the complicated political events of the decade.
The result is uneven, a book that includes a little bit of everything, but is not clearly aimed at either a scholarly or a general audience. Green has pulled together many interesting facts about a fascinating period. He is at his best when citing colorful tidbits from Alaman’s letters, British Foreign Office records, and the files of the Mexican Department of Public Education. Thumbnail sketches of leading politicians, accompanied by illustrations, are also welcome. But the narrative, though nicely written, is not gripping enough for the general reader; it assumes some background on Mexican history and often loses its thread in detail. There is little new for the specialist either, and the sketchiness of the presentation can be misleading. Although most of the book is sensibly argued, it is occasionally marred by oversimplifications, errors, and a tendency to follow partisan nineteenth-century sources. For example, the author attributes the problems of the Mexican polity to its citizens’ “folk culture” (p. 188), without considering alternative explanations proposed by recent scholars. He incorrectly states that divorce was possible (p. 57). And he accepts at face value the old escocés charge that yorkino politicians came from plebeian backgrounds (p. 94), even though his own evidence on Zavala contradicts this view.
This book will be most valuable as an introduction to the period for those interested in further study. The bibliography can serve as a useful starting place, though it is far from comprehensive since it misses many recent works and some important nineteenth-century sources, such as most of Carlos Maria de Bustamante’s writings. There is still much room left for additional research on this period. We still need biographies of Alaman and Zavala. We still need to know who the escoceses and yorkinos were, especially in the provinces. And we still must be shown whether these two groups in fact correlated closely with later political divisions, as Green contends. A synthesis of the period is premature until these and other questions are answered.
