The Alhóndiga of Guanajuato fell to the irregular army of Miguel Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende on September 28, 1810, in one of the most celebrated events in Mexican independence history. With the collapse of the economic and political capital of the Bajío, control over a major province of New Spain was wrenched from traditional authority. The rebellion in Tierradentro, as it was called in the City of Mexico, had been watched nervously for a fortnight by an Establishment sensitized to previous domestic tumultos and to social revolution of the most frightening sort in Haiti. The Hidalgo revolt was quickly and accurately perceived as a major threat to a well ordered way of life. There was, moreover, an acute awareness that the drought years of 1808 and 1809 and the soaring price of maize in 1810 had contributed to volatile social conditions which would surely exacerbate any uprising. Now the worst fears had been realized with the sack of Guanajuato.

Economic progress of the late nineteenth century afforded the upper class of Colombian society the opportunities to pursue new business goals and to improve its standard of living. Exports of coffee, steam navigation on the Magdalena River, the fitful building of railways, growth of urban populations, and the heightened tempo of foreign and domestic commerce all converged to the economic and social benefit of Colombia's landed and educated elite. Economic progress supported not only new elite professions in commerce and engineering but also traditional pursuits in medicine, law, and notably literature. In fact, nineteenth century Colombia witnessed a proliferation of cultural affectation which, because it was so divorced from reality, may be described as “the genteel tradition.”

The nineteenth century represented an era of declining influence for the Catholic church in Mexico, and no aspect of that trend created broader repercussions than the eclipse of the clergy's traditional role in higher education. Before the midcentury civil wars the conciliar seminaries graduated nearly as many laymen as did the public colegios, the majority of which in any case employed priests on their faculties. The seminaries, consequently, forged a vital link between the church and civil society, a link which potentially enhanced the political and social influence of the episcopate.

As trade between Spain and her American colonies declined in the seventeenth century, interprovincial commerce increased. This change within the Spanish Empire and some of its multiple implications have only recently been recognized and given scholarly attention. Consequently, little information is available on the part colonial municipal governments played in the imperial economic realignment. A case in point is the role of the Santiago cabildo in regard to the export trade which tied Chile's Central Valley, the region administered by that city council, to the Peruvian market economy. Although various studies provide supportive data on this subject, a close scrutiny of the council minutes, focused on policies that regulated outbound commerce and the production from which it flowed, can more clearly delineate the extent of creole initiative and cabildo participation in policy formulation and enforcement. A correlative theme pursued through this appraisal of the records concerns the socio-economic attitudes of the upper levels of society in the last century of Hapsburg rule.

One Mexican historian has described the post-war years of Benito Juárez' Administration (1867-72) in Mexico and that of his successor, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada (1872-76) as “a dictatorship without peace or progress.” The nation suffered from a breakdown in public order and morality; misery, anarchy and banditry were widespread. Indian uprisings occurred in Yucatán, Chiapas, Durango, Chihuahua, Nuevo León and Coahuila. Insurrections against the government of Juárez broke out in Tamaulipas, Puebla, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Guerrero; and conflicts between candidates for the government in Aguascalientes, Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi destroyed the public order. The causes of this breakdown in commonweal may be attributed to the long history of civil war in Mexico, the inadequacy of governmental institutions and lack of respect for a Constitution (1857) which incorporated many injustices within its Liberal framework. An important cause of recurring revolt was the presidential ambition of Juárez and his conflicts with Congress and the Supreme Court. His suspension of the Constitutional guarantees, by decree of January 17, 1870, and his dictatorial use of extraordinary powers brought much resentment; and, in the election of 1870, the Constitutional Party (Liberal) supported Porifirio Díaz against Juárez. Through a “reform” of the electoral law, Benito Juárez was able to gain a plurality. He was only exceeded in his autocratic use of power by his successor, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada who vigorously enforced the Reform Laws that made of the anti-Church program a Lerdist kulturkampf. It was during a year of Juárez' Administration that Brevet Major General William S. Rosecrans served as Envoy Extraordinary & Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to Mexico. Officially he held this post from July 27, 1968 to June 26, 1869. The American Minister spoke bluntly in criticism of the Juárez Administration, and of Lerdo de Tejada who was then President of the Supreme Court, a position equivalent to the Vice-presidency.

Georges Baudot has written a lengthy book (554 pages) which bears a beautiful and suggestive title: Utopia and History in Mexico. In publishing this work, he seems to have had two very clear purposes in mind. The first is to fill an enormous gap since “strange as it may seem, the authentic sources for most of our knowledge about pre-Columbian civilization in central Mexico have never been studied.” (p. ix) The second, is to demonstrate the grandeur of the Franciscan work in the sixteenth century, impelled by millenarian fervor.

With respect to the manner in which Baudot fulfills his first and commendable purpose, there is nothing more to be said after the two articles Dr. Edmundo O'Gorman has published in Historia Mexicana. With regard to the second, I must admit that the reading of the book provoked in me, in almost equal measures, amazement and envy. I will explain. It amazes me (and not just a little) that an author who confronts what is for me, at least, such a difficult topic as Franciscan millenarianism can establish the antecedents of this tendency in only twenty pages (71-90) and utilize for it only a single biblical citation (p. 78, note 14: Revelations XX:4-6). Envy presents itself after concluding that such frugality must be due to the vast culture of the French public to whom the work is addressed.