Stormy Passage: Mexico from Colony to Republic, 1750-1850 [Paperback]

In this engaging book, Eric Van Young traces the political, economic, and social development of Mexico through the crucial one hundred years of its remarkable transition from a relatively prosperous Spanish colony to a violently unstable republic marked by economic stagnation, political confrontation, and burgeoning efforts at modernization. Featuring primary sources from figures of the period, Van Young discusses the political instability of the periodinternal warfare, military uprisings, intermittent dictatorships, sharp conflicts among political groupingsand attributes them to a belief by political actors in the fundamental lack of legitimacy in central government institutions after the sweeping away of the Bourbon imperial structure and its replacement first with a very short-lived Mexican empire followed by a series of increasingly authoritarian aspirational republican constitutions.Eric Van Youngis Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. His books includeThe Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810-1821, winner of the 2002 Bolton-Johnson Prize.

Van Young, a noted Mexicanist, here details a century of Mexican history, spanning 17501850. He focuses on Mexicos often stormy transition from colony to nation and posits that his contribution is more of an extended interpretive synthetic essay than a general survey text. This is an apt way to cast the title as it is expansive in scope yet offers significant insight from a noted scholar who has made a career of studying this period. The work is friendly to readers who may have minimal historical knowledge of Mexicos past, and the analysis and compact nature of the narrative offers more advanced students and scholars new ways in which to interpret this critical period. There is much to unpack, ranging from decolonization and the impact on Mexican society to the successes and failures of modernizatil“'