Liberalism as Utopia: The Rise and Fall of Legal Rule in Post-Colonial Mexico, 1820-1900

Description

Liberalism as Utopia challenges widespread perceptions about the weakness of Mexico's nineteenth-century state. Schaefer argues that after the War of Independence non-elite Mexicans - peasants, day laborers, artisans, local merchants - pioneered an egalitarian form of legal rule by serving in the town governments and civic militias that became the local faces of the state's coercive authority. These institutions were effective because they embodied patriarchal norms of labor and care for the family that were premised on the legal equality of male, adult citizens. The book also examines the emergence of new, illiberal norms that challenged and at the end of the century, during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, overwhelmed the egalitarianism of the early-republican period. By comparing the legal cultures of agricultural estates, mestizo towns and indigenous towns, Liberalism as Utopia also proposes a new way of understanding the social foundations of liberal and authoritarian pathways to state formation in the nineteenth-century world. Cover ......Page 1 Half-title page......Page 3 Series page......Page 4 Title page......Page 5 Copyright page......Page 6 Dedication......Page 7 Contents......Page 9 Acknowledgments......Page 11 I Liberalism as Utopia......Page 13 II Peasant and Nation......Page 19 III Law and Revolution......Page 25 I Politics......Page 32 II Soldiers......Page 38 III Patricians......Page 49 IV Municipalities......Page 60 I Families......Page 74 II Recruitment......Page 77 III The Civic Militia......Page 91 IV Civil War......Page 101 I Land and Revolution......Page 109 II Disorder......Page 113 III Metamorphosis......Page 117 IV Despots......Page 124 V Regions of Refuge......Page 134 I A Separate People......Page 141 II Colonial Legacies......Page 145 III Land Conflicts......Page 164 I Mythologies......Page 173 II Jefes Políticos......Page 177 III Privatization......Page 190 IV Labor......Page 199 V Local Courts......Page 209 Conclusion: Law and Exception in the Making of Modern Mexico......Page 216 Bibliography......Page 228 Index......Page 251