These two volumes of essays provide a sampling of the work being done by historians associated, at present or in the recent past, with the Centro de Estudios Históricos of El Colegio de México. The 44 essays by as many authors were published in honor of the center’s fiftieth anniversary, in April 1991. Volume 1 begins with essays on the origins of the center and El Colegio by Louis González y González and Silvio Zavala. Three essays focus on countries other than Mexico: two on Venezuela and one on the Dominican Republic. A historiography section includes Enrique Florescano on nineteenth-century Mexico. A section on family, demography, and migration includes Pedro Carrasco on colonial Spanish-Indian marriages, Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru on the colonial family, Solange Alberro on colonial elite views of Indian and criollo, Israel Cavazos García on the colonization of the northeast, Sergio Florescano Mayet on demographic change in nineteenth-century Xalapa, Clara Lida on Spanish immigration to Mexico, and Moisés González Navarro on Mexican-Spanish relations.
A section on economic dynamics and policy includes Pedro Pérez Herrero on colonial growth versus national “crisis,” Anne Staples on territorial mining deputations, Abdiel Oñate Villarreal on Porfirian agrarian policy, and Alicia Hernández Chávez on economic change, 1926-1940. A section on villages and haciendas includes Bernardo García Martínez on the hacienda’s residents, Manuel Miño Grijalva on the hacienda-obraje complex, and Jan Bazant on the sale of an elite hacienda.
A section on commerce, finance, and investments features Jorge Silva Riquer on colonial prices and merchandise, Carlos Marichal Salinas on colonial entrepreneurs and finance, Araceli Ibarra Bellón on nineteenth-century foreign trade, Carmen Blázquez Domínguez on entrepreneurial investment in Tehuantepec after 1852, and Inés Herrera Canales on the Real del Monte Mining Company in 1861-1862.
Volume 2 begins with a section on cultural history, featuring Elias Trabulse on colonial scientific books, Carmen Castañeda on the book’s uses in colonial Guadalajara, Alfonso Martínez Rosales on colonial calligraphy, Dorothy Tanck de Estrada on colonial Latin culture, and Virginia González Claverán on the “pre-archaeologist” Antonio Pineda. A section on education includes Josefina Zoraida Vázquez on the U.S. image in Mexican texts, Engracia Loyo on the educational influence of North American enclaves, and Cecilia Greaves Laine on the impact of free textbooks in Chiapas.
Essays on the state and political organization include Hira de Gortari Rabiela on territory and identity in the construction of the nation, Marcello Carmagnani on nineteenth-century regionalism, Mercedes de Vega on federalism in republican Zacatecas, Juan Ortiz Escamilla on the military and Mexico State to 1835, Reynaldo Sordo Cedeño on Santa Anna and the Centralist Republic, Carlos Illades on organized tailors and resistance in Mexico City after 1864, Romana Falcon on jefes politicos in nineteenth-century Coahuila, Manuel Ceballos Ramírez on the roots of Mexican social Catholicism, Jean-Pierre Bastian on the political geography of Don Porfirio’s opposition, Santiago Portilla on law, revolution, and Madero’s political activities, Javier Garcíadiego Dantan on President Carranza’s military policy, Victoria Lerner Sigal on Saturnino Cedillo’s cacicazgo after 1921, and José Antonio Matesanz on the Mexican press and the Spanish Civil War.
The essays constitute an original, useful, even a representative sample of Mexican historical research in progress in 1991.
