When did Francisco I. Madero Decide on Revolution?

1974 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry W. Knudson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Ciudad Juarez ◽  
News Story ◽  
Porfirio Diaz ◽  
Difficult Question ◽  
Written Questions ◽  
The Revolution

A surprisingly frank letter from Francisco I. Madero, political figurehead of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, to New York publisher William Randolph Hearst casts new light on the difficult question of when Madero finally opted for revolution to topple the 35-year dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911).The letter was dated April 25, 1911, when Madero was with insurrectionary troops fighting at Ciudad Juárez. It contained Madero's responses to some written questions on his role in the Revolution submitted by Hearst through Sonunerfield, an American consular official in Mexico. Madero's answers were to form the basis for a news story in the Hearst newspapers.

The Mexican Revolution, 1910–1946

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen Buchenau
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Central State ◽  
Porfirio Diaz ◽  
Significant Achievement ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Political Realignment ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Revolution

The Mexican Revolution was the first major social revolution of the 20th century. Its causes included, among others, the authoritarian rule of dictator Porfirio Díaz, the seizure of millions of acres of indigenous village lands by wealthy hacendados and foreign investors, and the growing divide between the rich and the poor. As a result of these varied causes and Mexico’s strong social and regional divisions, the revolution against Díaz lacked ideological focus. The revolutionaries ousted Díaz within six months but could not agree on the new social and political order and—after a failed attempt at democracy—ended up fighting among themselves in a bitter civil war. In 1917, the victorious Constitutionalist faction crafted a landmark constitution, the first in the world to enshrine social rights and limit the rights of private, and particularly foreign capital. Although never fully implemented and partially repealed in the 1990s, the document remains the most significant achievement of the revolution. After 1920, a succession of revolutionary generals gradually centralized political power until the election of a civilian presidential candidate in 1946. This effort at state building confronted significant resistance from popular groups, regional warlords, and disaffected leaders who had lost out in the political realignment. In the end, the symbolic significance of the revolution exceeded its political and social outcomes. While fundamentally agrarian in nature, the revolution thus ultimately produced a new national elite that gradually restored a strong central state. One can easily divide the revolution into a military (1910–1917) and a reconstructive phase (1917–1946). However, the latter phase witnessed an important generational shift that transferred political power from the leaders of the military phase to their subordinates as well as civilian representatives, with the formation of a revolutionary ruling party in 1929 serving as the most important watershed moment in this process. Therefore, this essay distinguishes among three separate phases: insurrection and civil war (1910–1917); reconstruction (1917–1929); and institutionalization (1929–1946).

The Climate of Conflict: Politico-environmental Press Coverage and the Eruption of the Mexican Revolution, 1907–1911

2019 ◽  
Vol 99 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-499
Author(s):  
Mikael D. Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
Climatological Data ◽  
Porfirio Diaz ◽  
Environmental Press ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Historical Climatology ◽  
Climatic Information ◽  
The Revolution

Abstract This article combines the insights of historical climatology and analysis of press coverage to reexamine the agrarian origins of the Mexican Revolution from 1907 to 1911. Using a collection of hundreds of articles from dozens of newspapers, contemporary meteorological and agricultural bulletins, government correspondence, secondary works, and recent historical climatological data, I argue that environmental dynamics and political processes were intertwined in the four years preceding the revolution. Specifically, I contend that politico-environmental press coverage of drought and frost based on incomplete or misleading regional climatic information strongly influenced the government's relief measures and thereby exacerbated the acute economic and political crises that led to the ouster of the dictator Porfirio Díaz. By analyzing these understudied climate-society dynamics surrounding the Mexican Revolution, the article's aim is to expand understanding of the significance of these dynamics as well as to incorporate the Mexican case into the global historiography on climate and rebellion.

Entrepreneurs and Their Businesses during the Mexican Revolution

2012 ◽  
Vol 86 (4) ◽  
pp. 719-744 ◽  
Author(s):  
María del Carmen Collado
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
New Ventures ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
Porfirio Diaz ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Total Destruction ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Revolution

Most of the academic work on the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) has focused on sociopolitical and military affairs; few scholars have considered the economic aspects of the period. Even though business historians know now that the Revolution did not bring generalized chaos or total destruction of manufacturing, we still need more research on economic issues. This article analyzes the evolution of the businesses of the Braniff family, as well as their involvement in politics once the regime of Porfirio Díaz collapsed. It examines the Braniffs' political ideas, their strategies to gain power, and their support of the political faction favorable to their interests. The article exposes the tactics the family used to guarantee the safety of their businesses, the losses they suffered, and the new ventures they made after the Revolution.

Seasons of Rebellion: Nature, Organisation of Cotton Production and the Dynamics of Revolution in La Laguna, Mexico, 1910–1916

1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM K. MEYERS
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Cotton Production ◽  
National Politics ◽  
North Central ◽  
Porfirio Diaz ◽  
The North ◽  
Ebb And Flow ◽  
The Revolution

Throughout the Mexican Revolution, the ebb and flow of conflict in the north-central Laguna region (see Map 1) fed directly into the mainstream of national politics. From 1900, the Laguna's workers and peasants expressed economic and social discontent through insubordination, theft, banditry and sporadic – sometimes organised – demands for better wages and working conditions. Following the lead of a discontented, highly competitive and fractious landholding elite, they were among the first to revolt against the Porfirio Díaz government and continued to influence the direction of the revolution as the region was alternately fought over and administered by each of the north's principal factions. The ultimate triumph of any faction in the revolution required control of Mexico's north, and that required controlling the Laguna.

scholarly journals Prison Letters of Ricardo Flores Magon to Lilly Sarnoff

1977 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-422
Author(s):  
Paul Avrich
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Baja California ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Porfirio Diaz ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
The One ◽  
Partido Liberal Mexicano ◽  
The Revolution

The career of Ricardo Flores Magón, the foremost Mexican anarchist of the twentieth century, involves a curious paradox. On the one hand, he must be counted among the leading inspirers and martyrs of the Mexican Revolution. His movement, embodied in the Partido Liberal Mexicano, set in motion the forces that, in May 1911, drove Porfirio Díaz into exile; and his journal, Regeneración, which in the early stages of the Revolution reached a circulation of nearly 30,000, played an important part in rousing Mexican laborers, rural as well as urban, against the Díaz dictatorship and in pushing the Revolution in a more egalitarian direction than it might otherwise have taken. Under the banner of “Land and Liberty”, the Magonista revolt of 1911 in Baja California established short-lived revolutionary communes at Mexicali and Tijuana, having for their theoretical basis Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread, a work which Flores Magón regarded as a kind of anarchist bible and which his followers distributed in thousands of copies. Today the memory of Flores Magón is honored throughout Mexico. His remains rest in the Rotunda of Illustrious Men in Mexico City. In all parts of the country streets and squares bear his name, and Mexicans pay him homage as a great “precursor” of their Revolution, which was one of the major social upheavals of the twentieth century.

The Common Law in Colonial America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Revolutionary Movement ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
American Law ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
The Law ◽  
Substantive Law ◽  
The Revolution

This volume begins where volumes 2 and 3 ended. The main theme of the four-volume project is that the law of America’s thirteen colonies differed profoundly when they first were founded, but had developed into a common American law by the time of the Revolution. This fourth volume focuses on what was common to the law of Britain’s thirteen North American colonies in the mid-eighteenth century, although it also takes important differences into account. The first five chapters examine procedural and substantive law in colonies and conclude that, except in North Carolina and northern New York, the legal system functioned effectively in the interests both of Great Britain and of colonial localities. The next three chapters examine changes in law and the constitution beginning with the Zenger case in 1735—changes that ultimately culminated in independence. These chapters show how lawyers became leading figures in what gradually became a revolutionary movement. It also shows how lawyers used legal and constitutional ideology in the interests, sometimes of an economic character, of their clients. The book thereby engages prior scholarship, especially that of Bernard Bailyn and John Phillip Reid, to show how ideas and constitutional values possessed independent causal significance in leading up to the Revolution but also served to protect institutional structures and socioeconomic interests that likewise possessed causal significance.

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