The Condition of the Poor in Mexico, 1834

Abstract

M /[1zEXICAN independence opened a new vista to the fast rising industrial classes in Britain. Eager investors early sought to tap the riches of the erstwhile kingdom of New Spain. British mining company agents were well established on Mexican soil as early as 1824, although recognition did not come until 1825. The British Foreign Office, openly seeking Mexican trade advantages, instructed its diplomatic representative, Henry George Ward, and its consuls, to procure accurate information on the social, economic and political conditions in Mexico. These representatives assiduously collected and compiled a vast amount of important data drawn from many parts of the Mexican Republic.' The commercial excitemeiit over Mexico stimulated a desire for accurate information on Mexican conditions and a concerted effort was made by British governmental agencies to assemble such data. Parliament, the Board of Trade, the Home Office and other official bodies applied to the Foreign Office as a logical source. Reports on social conditions in many parts of Mexico, information on mining, trade statistics and other data collected make the British consular and diplomatic dispatches a veritable Potosi for the economic and social historian. The document here reproduced is a good example of the material to be found in these dispatches. But the document is more than an example. It is, in itself, a survey of Mexican social conditions in 1834. Biased, and somewhat myopic though the viewpoint expressed in it may be, the document represents one of the few attempts to answer a basic question: how did the working people live? Actually, we know very little about how they lived. Few monographs deal with the subject. But until this * The author is a meinber of the departmeint of history, Uiniversity of Califorinia, Los Angeles. 1 Henry George Ward to George Canning, Mexico, Oct. 21, 1826, Public Records Office, London, Foreign Office, Section 50, Vol. 24 (cited hereinafter as PRO, F0 followed by the appropriate section and volume number), Microfilm, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. All of the dispatches cited are from the Bancroft Library microfilm collection with the exception of the document itself.