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Notes on Quantitative History: Federal Expenditure and Social Change in Mexico Since 1910

1970; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 5; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0023879100040267

1542-4278

Thomas E. Skidmore, Peter H. Smith,

Politics and Society in Latin America

James Wilkie's The Mexican Revolution: Federal Expenditure and Social Change Since 1910 is an industrious attempt to get beneath the conventional wisdom about the changes wrought by the Mexican Revolution. The author's careful compilation of budgetary data should sharply challenge the longstanding and widespread assumptions that: (a) useful historical material from Latin America does not exist in statistical form, and (b) even if it did exist, the mystical qualities of Latin culture defy all efforts at measurement. Wilkie has shown that—with luck, perseverence, and imagination—data can be found. One hopes that his example will encourage other students of the area to seek out similar data and reap further intellectual benefits from quantitative analysis: hypothesis-testing, measurement of trends, and rigorous comparison.