We Are Now the True Spaniards: Sovereignty, Revolution, Independence, and the Emergence of the Federal Republic of Mexico,1808-1824

摘要

Over the last ten to 15 years, as the date of Mexico's bicentenary of independence in 2010 drew closer, the study of the country's rupture from Spain and its early foundational decades became an increasingly popular subject among historians. Conferences were hosted, lectures given, and a wealth of books covering different aspects of the period published. Moving beyond the long-discredited patriotic narratives that viewed the struggle as one between an aggrieved, oppressed Mexican nation and its Spanish colonial masters, two distinct schools of thought emerged. On the one hand, there is the 'local conflict' school of historians who, by focusing on regional history, have argued that local grievances were ultimately responsible for the eruption of violence in very specific regions of provincial Mexico (whilst not in others), and that the ideas of the Enlightenment and events in Spain were actually a secondary or minor contributing factor.