Douglas W. Richmond – författare

Carranza's Victory recounts the processes by which state governments loyal to President Venustiano Carranza worked to defeat his rivals and consolidate the carrancista regime during the Mexican Revolution. Combining seventeen studies of state governments with larger considerations of national politics, Douglas W. Richmond establishes why Carranza's forces triumphed over his more widely lauded villista and zapatista rivals. Drawn from decades of research on a notoriously fraught period of Mexican history, this book offers a significant reinterpretation of the decade-long civil war that changed Mexico dramatically. Previous accounts overlook Carranza's successes despite his victory over Victoriano Huerta, Pancho Villa, and Emiliano Zapata. Richmond's detailed study describes how individuals in the north, center, and southeast of Mexico supported Carranza and his governors, helping his regime remain in power. All the factions that emerged by 1915 began as regional movements; the carrancistas spread successfully beyond their Coahuila power base to gain the support of working-class, rural, and middle-class groups. In his analysis, Richmond focuses on seventeen state governments with discussions of land reform, labor unrest, anti-foreign resentments, progressive social movements, and religious conflicts. Early chapters describe Carranza's rise to power in Coahuila, where he established reformist credentials, then detail his victory over dictator Huerta as well as the revolutionary leaders Villa and Zapata. Subsequent chapters explain how Villa's Chihuahua stronghold collapsed under the weight of carrancista political and military leadership. A counterpoint emerges in the account of Carranza's bloody and often frustrated effort to subdue the zapatistas in Morelos. Later chapters analyze social reforms enacted by carrancista governments, such as Salvador Alvarado's expansion of educational opportunities in Yucatán. With trenchant analysis and narrative candor, Carranza's Victory reveals the extent to which Carranza governed as an authoritarian president who advocated reformism and fought vice, as his state governments varied between implementing socioeconomic reforms and acting with brute force.

Synthesizing a wealth of primary and secondary sources, Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán offers a fresh study of Yucatán’s complex and vio­lent history that expands and revises perceptions of liberal as well as Second Empire politics in Yucatán from 1855 to 1876.The Yucatán peninsula has one of the longest, most multifaceted histories in the Americas. From the arrival of European explorers, native Mayan peoples with successful traditions and internecine conflicts grappled with outside forces attempting to graft a new template of life and politics on it by force. Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán provides a rigorously researched study of the vexed and bloody period of 1855 to 1876, during which successive national governments imposed, replaced, and restored liberal policies.Synthesizing extensive and heterogeneous sources, Douglas W. Rich­mond covers three tumultuous political upheavals of this period: first, how Mexico’s fledgling republic attempted to impose a liberal ideol­ogy at odds with traditional Mayan culture on Yucatán; then, how the French-backed regime of Emperor Maximilian began to reform Yucatan; and finally how the republican forces of Benito Juárez restored the liberal hegemony. Many issues spurred resistance to the liberal governments. Imposition of free trade policies, the suppression of civil rights, and persecution of the Catholic Church mobilized white opposition to liberal governors. Mayans fought the seizure of their communal lands. A long-standing desire for regional autonomy united virtually all Yucatecans.Richmond analyzes these shifts precisely for scholars while remaining accessible to general readers fascinated by Mexico’s complex history. He advances the thought-provoking argument that Yucatán both fared bet­ter under the Maximilian’s Second Empire than under the liberal republic and would have thrived more had the Second Empire not collapsed.The most violent and bloody manifestation of these broad conflicts was the long-running Caste War (Guerra de Castas), the most severe and sustained peasant revolt in Latin American history. Where other scholars have advocated the simplistic position that the war was a Mayan upris­ing designed to re-establish a mythical past civilization, Richmond’s sophisticated recounting of political developments from 1855 to 1876 restores nuance and complexity to this pivotal time in Yucatecan history.Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán is a welcome addition to scholarship about Yucatán and about state consolidation, empire, and regionalism.

The Yucatán Peninsula has one of the longest, most multifaceted histories in the Americas. With the arrival of Europeans, native Maya with long and successful cultural and diplomatic traditions of their own had to grapple with outside forces attempting to impose new templates of life and politics on them.  Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán provides a rigorously researched study of the vexed and bloody period of 1855 to 1876, during which successive national governments implemented, replaced, and restored liberal policies.   Synthesizing an extensive and heterogeneous range of sources, Douglas W. Richmond covers three tumultuous political upheavals of this period. First, Mexico’s fledgling republic attempted to impose a liberal ideology at odds with traditional Maya culture on Yucatán; then, the French-backed regime of Emperor Maximilian began to reform Yucatán; and, finally, the republican forces of Benito Juárez restored the liberal hegemony. Many issues spurred resistance to these liberal governments. Instillation of free trade policies, the suppression of civil rights, and persecution of the Roman Catholic Church mobilized white opposition to liberal governors. The Mayas fought the seizure of their communal properties. A long-standing desire for regional autonomy united virtually all Yucatecans. Richmond advances the thought-provoking argument that Yucatán both fared better under Maximilian’s Second Empire than under the liberal republic and would have thrived more had the Second Empire not collapsed.   The most violent and bloody manifestation of these broad conflicts was the Caste War (Guerra de Castas), the longest sustained peasant revolt in Latin American history. Where other scholars have advocated the simplistic position that the war was a Maya uprising designed to reestablish a mythical past civilization, Richmond’s sophisticated recounting of political developments from 1855 to 1876 restores nuance and complexity to this pivotal time in Yucatecan history.   Richmond’s Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán is a welcome addition to scholarship about Mexico and Yucatán as well as about state consolidation, empire, and regionalism.