The cartoon had a considerable influence on the political life of Mexico in the period immediately prior to the Revolution. This influence continues in contemporary Mexico, but with a completely different character. This brief essay proposes to examine the causes of this change of attitude in the Mexican cartoon, for its measure reflects the transformation of the country. To do this, let us begin with a summary analysis of the nature of the cartoon in independent Mexico.

The year 1848 witnessed the first great outburst of German political caricature in modern times. In imitation of more illustrious French and English examples, a host of satirical journals sprang up, most of which sought to spice their collections of anecdotes, topical poems and witticisms with at least one full-page cartoon of political content. The treatment of political topics varied considerably from journal to journal, but generally speaking the tendency is to “play it for the laughs”, and it is not so much to the satirical journal as to the satirical print, which in its frequent anonymity and its lack of editorial restrictions enjoyed a freedom undreamed of by more sophisticated publications, that we must look for really uninhibited political comment. Numerically, these prints far exceeded anything the previous centuries had brought forth and in their numbers and in the opinions they express they provide the historian with valuable insights into the climate of public opinion in the “Year of Revolutions”. Individually, however, referring as they often do to otherwise forgotten events and personalities — who are mostly not named but simply represented — these prints can present the historian with almost insuperable problems of interpretation. Presumably for this reason, they have never, so far as I am aware, been subjected to detailed examination and evaluation. Veit Valentin, one of the few men who would have been fully equal to the task, did promise to give an account of them in the third volume of his Geschichte der deutschen Revolution von 1848/9, but so far as I have been able to ascertain, this promised third volume never appeared, and such information about the cartoons of 1848 as is available is largely restricted to the honourable mentions recorded in general histories of caricature and the two short studies produced by the prolific, but somewhat erratic, Eduard Fuchs, 1848 in der Karikatur (Berlin, n.d. [1898]), and Ein vormärzliches Tanzidyll, Lola Montez in der Karikatur (Munich, n.d. [1904]).

The Latin-American Wars of Independence realized the long-standing hope of the criollo gentry to rid themselves of Spanish limitations on their economic and political activities. From the beginning of the New World colonies, the Spanish rulers had labored diligently to check the aspirations of the colonial gentry by limiting their access to both land and status. Grants of encomienda had yielded up to the colonists use rights to Indian labor and produce, but not the ownership of land. At the same time, the Crown had curtailed the ability of criollos to obtain titles of nobility. These limitations had been supported by the prowess of Spanish arms, effective perhaps even more in keeping potential competitors at bay in Europe than in exercising viable military control in the New World. The failure of this ultimate means of control during the Napoleonic wars finally called into question also continued Spanish dominance over the American colonies.

My original idea was to discuss, in the group of sociologists from different Asian countries, the applicability of Western sociological concepts in an Asian environment. After thinking it over, I decided to tackle the problem the other way around and to ask myself to what extent a sociological study of Asian societies could contribute to general sociological theory, and perhaps even to a deeper understanding of Western society. As a matter of fact, such an approach will automatically amount to a better understanding of some of the defects, lags, and gaps in general sociological theory, as current in some of the literature.

Phenomena identified as spirit mediumship seem to be world wide and to be recognizable from an early period in human society. Attention has been paid to them by writers of classical antiquity of whom, from an anthropological point of view, Jane Harrison was one of the most noteworthy. Influenced by Durkheim and by Rivers, she recognized the importance of collective elements in religion and of the need for a knowledge of the social structure to gain an understanding of any particular cult. Robustly she argued, “What a people does in relation to its gods must always be one clue, and perhaps the safest, to what it thinks.” Knowing that her attempt to build a bridge between anthropology and the classics was viewed sceptically in some quarters, she countered trenchantly “It is only a little anthropology that is a dangerous thing.”