Between 1836 and 1861, Mexico’s difficulties as a sovereign state became fully exposed. Its example provides a case study for all similarly emerging independent states that have broken away from long-standing imperial systems. The leaders of the Republic in Mexico envisaged the construction of a nation, in a process that often conflicted with ethnic, religious, and local loyalties. The question of popular participation always remained outstanding, and this book examines regional and local movements as the other side of the coin to capital city issues and aspirations. Formerly an outstanding Spanish colony on the North American sub-continent, financial difficulties, economic recession, and political divisions made the new Republic vulnerable to spoliation. This began with the loss of Texas in 1836, the acquisition of the Far North by the United States in 1846–8, and the European debt-collecting Intervention in 1861. This study examines the Mexican responses to these setbacks, culminating in the Liberal Reform Movement from 1855 and the opposition to it.

Unlike wars between nations, wherein the population generally comes together to defend its borders and is united by a common national goal, civil wars tear countries apart, divide families, and turn neighbors against each other. Civil wars are a form of self-harm in which a country's people seek redemption through self-destruction, punishing or severing those parts that are seen to have made the nation ill. And yet civil wars--with their characteristically appalling violence--remain chillingly common, defying the notion that they are somehow an aberration. In The Grammar of Civil War Will Fowler examines the origin, process, and outcome of civil war. Using the Mexican Civil War of 1857-61 (or the War of the Reform, the political and military conflict that erupted between the competing liberal and conservative visions of Mexico's future), Fowler seeks to understand how civil wars come about and, when they do, how they unfold and why. By outlining the grammatical principles that underpin a new framework for the study of civil war, Fowler stresses what is essential for one to take place and explains how, once it has erupted, it can be expected to develop and end, according to the syntax, morphology, and meanings that characterize and help understand the grammar of civil war generally.

A history of local resistance and contributions to early Mexican nationhood. Reform, Rebellion and Party in Mexico, 1836-1861 is a history of Mexico's early, turbulent years as a sovereign state. From local ethnic and religious divisions to statewide financial troubles, the early republic nearly failed. Brian Hamnet surveys these challenges, such as the 1836 loss of the Far North to the United States and the 1861 European debt-collecting Intervention, as well as Mexican responses which culminated in the landmark Liberal Reform Movement in 1855. A history of a former colony caught between the European powers and an expanding United States, this book is an exemplary case study for newly independent states.