Hi all; Book review: "Maximilian & Juarez" by Jasper Ridley.
I picked up this book at Half/Price books:
Maximilian and Juarez
Jasper Ridley, July 2001, 353 pages
halfpricebooks.com
I read history books constantly, but this is the best one I've cracked in some time.
The subject is particularly illuminating, in that it is typical in the US to pretty much ignore the history of our neighboring nations. This book gives a good background on Mexico, from the time of its separation from Spain through about the time of the US Civil War. There are some similarities between that situation and the present. The US had long made it a policy that while the European monarchies (or other governments) would not be actively chased out of the New World, American force would be employed to prevent them from recolonizing lands that had successfully revolted. Gradually the continents were liberated from European control. One imagines that the view of the 19th century European royalty towards the US and Democracy must have been similar to the 1975 US view of the USSR and Communism. It must have looked bleak to the royalists, but the US Civil War provided an opportunity for the European monarchies to roll back that Tide of History a bit.
Mexico suffered civil war off and on for decades. The "Conservative" side consisted mostly of the Catholic Church leadership, the Military, people of mostly Spanish blood, and landowners. In the US, the most famous Mexican conservative leader is the familiar (to those who live in Texas) Santa Anna. The "Liberal" side consisted mostly of Indians and various reformers. Juarez was an educated Indian lawyer who led the liberals.
The US Civil War was also a time of civil war in Mexico. With the US in no position to interfere, a few conservative Mexicans managed to convince the French ruler, Napoleon III to commit troops to install an emperor in Mexico. Maximilian was chosen as that emperor. Note that to avoid various political problems was not French or Spanish, but was specifically chosen to be more or less honorable and a neutral party as far as the rest of Europe was concerned.
At that time, the leading nations of the world were Constitutional Monarchies, rather than the Democracies of our present time. So it must have seemed natural to try and improve the horrible conditions in Mexico by bringing in a Constitutional Monarch. And Maximilian was chosen with the intention of making him a truly Mexican emperor. That is, a man with Mexico's interests at heart rather than those of some European country.
To modern ears this sounds kind of odd, but in Europe, Monarchy predated the modern condition of nationalism, and, in fact, flourished with foreign rulers. The British crown had to change its name from the very German "Saxe-Coburg-Gotha" to "Windsor" after WW1 started:
spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk
In theory, at least, French ambitions were intervening in the Mexican civil war in order to help the Mexicans, by providing them with an improved government. This is not too dissimilar from the current US ambition to provide the Iraqis with an improved form of government. It also sounds odd that an emperor could be intended to have Mexico's interests at heart rather than his own. But the 19th century was a less cynical time than now. The book includes a paragraph, which I will quote verbatim in order to give an idea of how beautifully written this book is:
Maximilian was a man of strong principles. They were not the principles of the liberals, who believed in liberty, equality, and fraternity, in a constitution that granted to all men the rights of free speech, a free press, and freedom from arbitrary arrest, in parliamentary and legislative bodies elected by the people, either by universal or restricted sufferage. The supporters of absolute monarchy believed in obedience, in the duty of everyone, in whatever social class and position God had placed him, to obey his superiors and treat them with proper respect. He must give honest advice to his superiors but must always accept their decisions and carry out their orders. He must be kind and just to his inferiors, thank and reward them for loyal service, protect them in times of danger, and not abandon them if they were in trouble because they had performed their duty conscientiously. These were the principles that applied in the army and the Catholic Church, those two bastions of absolute monarchy, and they were the principles in which Archduke Ferdinand Max believed. [page 48]
The book is written by an English writer of some fame. It's also written with a (to me) refreshing slant on Mexican history. Instead of slanting things from a Mexican or American position, the English point of view is refreshing. This books gives an American a bit of an opportunity to see how his nation was viewed in the 19th century.
I was quite surprised to see that long before the rise of the US to superpower status, the European governments were unwilling to fight the US in the New World. As I've noted before on this thread, the strength in war is to the defender, as, all things being equal, he is more willing to spend the money and lives that victory, or stalemate, requires.
This is a book that is packed with interesting facts. Let me type a few paragraphs to give an idea of how it reads:
It was a rule of international law, one that Palmerston and other European governments always insisted upon in dealing with backwards nations, that the government of a country was responsible for the debts and acts of earlier governments and of those of its citizens who committed outrages against foreigners, even if these earlier governments and those citizens were its political opponents. But it was difficult to convince Mexican liberals, who had suffered so much at the hands of their conservative enemies, that they must now endure further hardships in order to compensate foreigners for the misdeeds of the conservatives, especially as the foreigners had suffered less from the conservatives than the liberals themselves had.
Juarez' government tried to negotiate a settlement of the debts with the British and French governments. They did not make any effort to reach an understanding with Spain, for the Spanish minister in Mexico City had openly sided with Miramon during the civil war. Juarez, accusing him of being in secret contact with the conservative guerrilla leaders, expelled him, together with the papal nuncio and the minister from Guatemala. But the British minister, Sir Charles Wyke, was not unreasonable. He was prepared to extend the time for repaying British creditors and to cancel part of the debts.
The French minister, Pierre Alphonse Dubois de Saligny, was more difficult. Apart from being the mouthpiece of a hostile government, he was an arrogant man who quarreled nearly as much with the other European diplomatic representatives in Mexico as he did with Juarez's ministers. Twenty years before, when he was the French minister in Texas during its short-lived independence, he had exaggerated an incident -- his pigs were killed by his Texan neighbor in a dispute about the boundaries of their gardens -- until it nearly led to a war between France and Texas. Strongly conservative in his sympathies, he took every opportunity to quarrel with the liberal government. In April 1861 he wrote to the French foreign minister that in view of "the state of anarchy, or rather social dissolution, prevailing in this wretched country," a strong French naval force should be sent at once to the coast of Mexico "to provide protection for our interests." [page 63]
It's loaded with fascinating historical tidbits. For example, I was unaware that, in its early history, "The United States showed it contempt for the established conventions of the old monarchies. It refused to give its diplomatic representatives to the Great Powers of Europe the title "ambassador" and insisted on calling them "ministers." I told them to refuse to wear the proper court dress when they were presented to the sovereigns to they were accredited and when they attended balls and receptions at court. American diplomats were often in contact with radical and even socialist revolutionaries, giving them moral encouragement when they made revolutions and United States passports to enable them to escape abroad when their revolutions failed." While that sounds like an accurate description of the youthful US mindset, it also seems disturbingly like what we complain about from today's younger nations. Or that Santa Anna lost a leg as a result of the "Pastry War" where France had gone to war against Mexico in order to "obtain compensation for a French pastry cook who had suffered damage to his property during a riot in Mexico City".
I just bought this book, and have only read the first 1/4 of it or so. But since it's obvious to me that my already long post would get totally out of control if I procastinated it to the completion, I decided to cut it short and put it up now.
Buy this book.
-- Carl
A google for his obscure name provides 5,730 hits at the moment:
google.com
For more on Maximilian, see:
geocities.com |
