Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War

Rating:
Summary: Indispensable
Review: In Empire and Revolution, eminent Mexican historian John Mason Hart unravels a process in which a vanguard U.S. financial elite in pursuit of empire initially penetrated Mexico by financially supporting Porfirio Diaz's successful revolt against the democratically elected government of Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada. Once in power, Diaz offered a friendly and stable regime predisposed to unfettered foreign, particularly U. S., investments which developed Mexico's infrastructure that inevitably led to its monopolistic control. This, in turn, allowed a select group of capitalists to acquire land and resources, in vast quantities unknown until now (nearly 70% of the border and the littoral), only to lose most of their acquisitions as a result of the Mexican Revolution. Hart continues on into the post-revolutionary period by detailing the process in which U. S. capital re-penetrated Mexico once the embers of revolutionary nationalism and social activism cooled and transformed into more pragmatic economic development, and traces it to the present interdependent relationship under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In essence this study offers the reader insight of how Mexico became the first third-world nation that the United States encountered and how it served as a model for guiding U. S. latter-day third-world hegemonic impulses.

While sweeping in scope, Hart's book provides more than just an abstract look at U. S. capital. This work is about individuals-replete with detailed portrayals of the key financial elite, both bankers and industrialists, and civil-war era generals who first pried open the door for U. S. capital investment in Mexico as well as the U. S. "colonists" that followed in their wake. Hart also sheds light into U. S. political and military might that helped buttress these financial elite's imperial pretensions-one key military intervention in Veracruz help tip the scales to Carranza during the Mexican Revolution. Although irascibly nationalistic, Carranza was more acceptable to the U. S. financial and political powers than were Villa or Zapata. Besides covering the political and military aspects of this imperial juggernaut, Hart provides insight into the implications of U. S. economic hegemony in Mexico and the resulting social and cultural interactions. Hart's description of cultural clashes and misunderstandings that occurred throughout this longue durée and the slow transformation into social, cultural, political and economic accommodations lends weight to the concept of an interrelated, albeit diffuse, cultural space that author Joel Garreau and others have christened MexAmerica.

Based on copious primary sources (some recently declassified) from widely dispersed archives and twelve years of research, Empire and Revolution is a seminal work from which future historians of Mexico and U. S. relations will need to begin their inquiry. This is a book that also should be read by all State Department types and businessmen dealing with Mexico and NAFTA-related issues. However, this book is not only for the specialists but also for all others interested in our neighbor to the South who desire to understand how interrelated our histories have been and will continue to be. This is an indispensable book.

Rating:
Summary: Empire and Revolution
Review: John Mason Hart's Empire and Revolution directs our attention to the role of Americans in Mexico in an entirely new way by emphasizing the diverse ways in which Americans have affected that country and the third world. He demonstrates the importance of financiers in opening our relations with Mexico and the ensuing development of industry, timber, mining, oil, agricultural, ranching and settlement. In the modern era he goes beneath the surface to explain the nature of the drug trade, tourism, and the border economy. He also posits Mexico as a model for understanding relations between the United States and the third world by demonstrating that Mexico was our first and most profound relationship with that part of humanity. Moreover, the narrative style, at times, flows like Walt Whitman's as the reader is given images of American expansion, not just in its westward movement, but south into Mexico. This is the best book on the role of the United States in the third world that I have read.

Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary account of Mexican History
Review: This amazing, seminal sweeping account details the role of Americans in Mexico from 1864 through the present. Concentrating mostly on the period of the 1860s-1920s this is the most amazing, excellent historical account of Mexico in the period that can be found. Far more then a tail of American investment this book tells the story of Mexico and its people experiencing the pangs of development and industrial revolution. President Diaz who dominated Mexican politics during this period made it possible for a vast number of Americans and other foreigners(like Germans and Spaniards) to purchase vast tracts of lands and develop not only the Oil industry but also the Mexican rail industry. In the 1910s a series of revolutions beginning with the Huerta insurrection brought such luminaries to the fore as Villa and Zapata. These forces eventually destroyed the large American investment in Mexico, harming the American exile community(much of which had helped to build up Mexican infrastructure) and swept away and entire era of Mexican politics. The Veracruz intervention is documented in great detail as are all aspects of the `Americanization' of states like Sonora. Scant attention is paid to the role of American tourists or Mormon missionaries or the years of 1930-1990(the era of the PRI). But nevertheless the book does bring the history to the present of NAFTA and presumes the election of FOX and the `almost' election of the PRD in the early 90s.

A wonderful book. A great read and one of the only books to give such a sweeping colorful detail to this essential period of Mexican history. A period that harpers to today's Mexican law which forbids foreigners from owning land in Mexico. Leftovers of the American adventure in Mexico can also be seen today in the national companies like Pemex and Cemex and the national railroads, most of whose infrastructure was built by Americans only be nationalized by the Mexican government in the 1920s.

A must read for anyone interested in Mexico, America, the border or the reasons for the way Mexico is today.

Seth J. Frantzman

Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary account of Mexican History
Review: This amazing, seminal sweeping account details the role of Americans in Mexico from 1864 through the present. Concentrating mostly on the period of the 1860s-1920s this is the most amazing, excellent historical account of Mexico in the period that can be found. Far more then a tail of American investment this book tells the story of Mexico and its people experiencing the pangs of development and industrial revolution. President Diaz who dominated Mexican politics during this period made it possible for a vast number of Americans and other foreigners(like Germans and Spaniards) to purchase vast tracts of lands and develop not only the Oil industry but also the Mexican rail industry. In the 1910s a series of revolutions beginning with the Huerta insurrection brought such luminaries to the fore as Villa and Zapata. These forces eventually destroyed the large American investment in Mexico, harming the American exile community(much of which had helped to build up Mexican infrastructure) and swept away and entire era of Mexican politics. The Veracruz intervention is documented in great detail as are all aspects of the 'Americanization' of states like Sonora. Scant attention is paid to the role of American tourists or Mormon missionaries or the years of 1930-1990(the era of the PRI). But nevertheless the book does bring the history to the present of NAFTA and presumes the election of FOX and the 'almost' election of the PRD in the early 90s.

A wonderful book. A great read and one of the only books to give such a sweeping colorful detail to this essential period of Mexican history. A period that harpers to today's Mexican law which forbids foreigners from owning land in Mexico. Leftovers of the American adventure in Mexico can also be seen today in the national companies like Pemex and Cemex and the national railroads, most of whose infrastructure was built by Americans only be nationalized by the Mexican government in the 1920s.

A must read for anyone interested in Mexico, America, the border or the reasons for the way Mexico is today.

Seth J. Frantzman

Rating:
Summary: An essential read.
Review: This is a seminal work and the best book on Mexican history that I have ever read. Sweeping in scope, John Mason Hart provides an intimate portrayal of American bankers, industrialists, and settlers in the shaping of America's rising influence in Mexico from the Civil War to the present interdependent relationship under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In addition to covering the vast economic, political, and military forces that shaped Mexico and the United States, Hart integrates the cultural and demographic shifts that have reshaped life on both sides of a quickly disappearing border. This is a must read not only for scholars, but anyone interested in American and Mexican history, as well as a major interpretive work on how the United States became a global empire. Mexico serves as the definitve laboratory for American foreign policy and the impusles that forged America's relationship to the "third world." This is an essential book for understanding not only the past, but also the future of North America.