The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 94, July 1990 - April, 1991 Page: 618
692 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
and internal relations) and Carlos Maria de Bustamante (congressman
and Mexico's first historian) through modern scholars such as Jose
Fuentes Mares, Carlos Bosch Garcia, and Josefina Zoraida Vazquez. To
place these pieces within their proper historiographic context, Robin-
son also provides an informative introductory essay and biographi-
cal/interpretive sketches of each writer. Readers anticipating an unre-
lentent succession of diatribes against imperialistic gringos may be
surprised by the Mexican self-criticism of several of the pieces. Otero,
for instance, relates Mexico's military defeats, in part, to his country's
failure to educate its Indians. English-language readers unfamiliar
with such prior studies as Seymour V. Connor and Odie B. Faulk's
North Amerzca Divided (1971) will get a good education in the admiration
of Mexican liberals for U.S. political institutions and progressivism, and
the impact of their ideology on the war's causation and Mexico's later
history and historiography. These essays also indicate that Mexican
writers have put far more emphasis than American historians upon the
escapades of Joel Poinsett, the first U.S. minister to Mexico; two of the
pieces focus upon the alleged attempt by Poinsett to subvert Mexican
independence through the instrumentality of the York Rite of the Ma-
sonic order. Robinson's introductory commentary errs in implying that
the war represented, "to a considerable extent, a southern venture" to
spread slavery (p. 115). He also discounts too readily Bustamante's allu-
sion to English plots during the American colonial period to spread
smallpox among Native Americans. But these are minor flaws in a pro-
vocative and valuable study.
John S. D. Eisenhower's book provides the most visually appealing
English-language synthesis of the war published to date. (The title
derives from Porfirio Diaz's supposed remark, "Poor Mexico! So far
from God and so close to the United States.") A colorful jacket, well-
reproduced illustrations with interesting captions, and an ample serv-
ing of maps complement such trimmings as attractive chapter title de-
signs. Eisenhower relates the war's diplomacy, ground campaigns, poli-
tics, personalities, soldiering experience, and oddities in a compelling,
chronologically sensitive account that seems destined for a broad read-
ership. Unfortunately, Eisenhower short-changes the war's naval his-
tory and entirely misses a number of aspects of the conflict. For in-
stance, his chapter about the U.S. occupation of Mexico City ignores
the involvement of U.S. officers and enlisted men in plots involving
Cuba and Yucatan. Part of Eisenhower's problem relates to his reliance,
generally, upon published documents and prior secondary works in
lieu of archival digging; part of the difficulty lies in his incomplete min-
ing of the secondary literature. Eisenhower's bibliography, for instance,
fails to list such works as Ernest M. Lander's 1980 monograph about618
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 94, July 1990 - April, 1991, periodical, 1991; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101214/m1/696/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.