Maximilian and Juarez

Napoleon III attempts to make the Austrian Archduke Maximilian the successor of Mexico's great nationalist leader, Benito Jua+a7rez, and sets the stage for a war of national liberation and the rise of United States influence in the hemisphere.

Ridley ( Elizabeth I ) offers a highly-detailed narrative of Napoleon III's strange, tragic mid-19th-century effort to install the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximillian as emperor of Mexico. Drawing on a wealth of sources, Ridley ably reconstructs the battle between Mexican liberal nationalists and conservative monarchists, the role of liberal leader Benito Juarez, the intervention of the Great Powers and the background of the indecisive archduke. The complex story includes debates over religious tolerance, jockeying over alliances with the Confederate States or with the Union, and the persistence of Juarez's guerrillas against the occupying French. When Napoleon, who had banked on a Confederate victory, wished to avoid war with the United States, he began a process that led to liberal victory and Maximillian's capture and execution. Those unfamiliar with the story may find the book, which would have benefited from a supplemental time line or chronology, confusing. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This well-researched history is an unsentimental look at the French intervention in Mexico (1862-67). Ridley ( The Tudor Age , LJ 9/15/90) focuses on the political tug-of-war between the Old World and the New. He does not indulge in the romanticism that sometimes shrouds this subject; his Maximilian is much less sympathetic than the man portrayed in Joan Haslip's The Crown of Mexico ( LJ 5/1/72). Ridley emphasizes the larger political battle fought in the United States and Europe and the often brutal means by which this battle was waged by both sides in fierce and gruesome guerilla war. Maximilian's fiscal and personal failures are ably contrasted with Juarez's cool integrity, though more detail on both their lives would have helped flesh out the book. While not a definitive history of the French intervention, this is a solid, well-written popular book. Recommended for general collections.
- Bruce R. Schueneman, Texas A&I Univ. Lib., Kingsville
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.