Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Last Emperor of Mexico: The Dramatic Story of the Habsburg Archduke Who Created a Kingdom in the New World

2023; Duke University Press; Volume: 103; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-10369128

1527-1900

Brian Connaughton,

American Constitutional Law and Politics

This study commences with the three leaders of Maximilian's empire in Mexico waiting for their execution by triumphant republican forces. It then takes the reader swiftly back in time to the war with the United States, which set off the Mexican crisis of the mid-nineteenth century and ultimately led to the civil war of 1858–60 between liberals and conservatives to determine the future of a stronger and independent Mexico. The defeat of the conservative cause in that confrontation led its adherents to resort to a French-backed monarchy to rescue and stabilize the country in their favor. For this context, the author quickly draws a picture of the liberal and conservative views, finishing his first chapter with a fledgling alliance between Mexican and French politicians aimed at stopping further US expansion southward and the promotion of its republican virtues.The second chapter presents the reader with a careful review of the early lives and ambitions of the future emperor and empress of Mexico, relating them closely to the faltering life of monarchy in Europe. The door thus opens onto chapter 3, dealing with an invasion of Mexico that was projected on the wings of personal ambition, the search for monarchical glory, and the wistful salvation of the Mexican nation but that was terribly fumbled from the start. The driving force of an obsessive, deceptive Napoleon III overcame all doubts. Deepening a sense of the earnest but flighty nature of the new imperial endeavor, chapter 4 weaves together the many uncertainties on both sides of the Atlantic regarding politics and military capabilities on the ground in Mexico, the blundering start of the French presence in the country, and the enormous pressures of Napoleon III of France and Franz Joseph of Austria on Maximilian. While the French emperor pushed to assure great gains at little cost, his Austrian peer guaranteed that his brother's Mexican venture would cost him his Hapsburg succession rights. Great Britain played the politics of ambivalence. Mexican public opinion, by contrast, was much presumed yet little studied and less understood. The situation in the United States, rent by civil war, remained undecided. Before Maximilian finally accepted his crown, French policy in Mexico had provoked conflict with the archbishop in the capital, who was not at all convinced by Napoleonic proposals of a middle road between liberal and conservative ultras regarding the role of the Catholic Church.The fifth chapter takes the reader into the perils of state building. Maximilian, arriving in May 1864, found Mexico a very weak state in financial ruin, and the “middle way” of political compromise bore little fruit in the politics of the divided country (p. 124). Edward Shawcross emphasizes the difficulties of a foreign Maximilian attempting to set up his liberal policies and alliances while facing nationalist rejection. By December he was contending with demands from Napoleon III, truculence by the papal nuncio, and a resurgent United States as the North began winning the civil war. Chapter 6 explains how this situation rapidly led to government realignment as the rift with the clergy deepened and the emperor sent his best Mexican generals abroad and disbanded the national army for fear of rebellion against his government. Clueless, Maximilian forged ahead with progressive legislation, only to create “a paper empire” since little was effective and opposition grew (p. 147). As French forces contemplated their odds, desperation led to the Black Decree on October 3, 1865, promising death to all armed dissidents. The year ended with Maximilian facing the impossibility of demonstrating positive results or making payments on the French debt he had developed.The last four chapters drum in the details of a lost cause. The year 1866 was one of fatalities: abandonment by Napoleon III, the failure of treasury reforms, Belgian and Austrian assistance impeded by the United States, Maximilian's temptation to abdicate, and Carlota's desperate trip to Europe to sway the French emperor and the pope leading her to insanity. Her loss, as the Mexican empire's boundaries shrank under renewed liberal assaults, led to stronger thoughts of abdication. By September 1866 Maximilian switched to a full conservative ministry to garner greater internal support even as Napoleon III urged abdication. The details of a situation spiraling out of control, at the mercy of contending parties within a failing regime, consume the rest of this well-written and fast-paced narrative. The final defeat, trial, and execution of Maximilian is recounted in sympathetic detail.This book, clearly framed as a study in arrogant imperialism, does a fine analysis within this perspective. By contrast, Mexican historiography is noticeably absent, and the Mexican groups and individuals who supported this doomed effort are only mildly if caustically appraised. The links between conservative groups in Mexico and Europe go untold. Yet Edward Shawcross gives renewed relevance to the struggles of nineteenth-century Mexico in a world of rising imperialist ambitions.