Writing Mexican History, by Eric Van Young

Abstract

Writing Mexican History, by Eric Van Young. Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 2012. xii, 338 pp. $85.00 US (cloth), $27.95 US (paper). Historians, unlike anthropologists, are not much given to confessional narratives. Beyond penning the usual how I came to this subject prefaces, they generally eschew deep reflection on their interpretive choices, the goal of objectivity, though theoretically derided, remains a kind of ghostly, hovering presence. However, in this valuable collection of essays, Eric Van Young finds a way to inject autobiography into historiography. Indeed, he sees the two as aligned, suggesting that his own intellectual trajectory--from his first monograph on the agrarian history of Guadalajara, to his magnum opus on popular insurgency during the wars of independence, to his current work on Lucas Alaman--exemplifies larger shifts in the practice of history during the last thirty years or so, at least among Anglophone historians. (p. 13) Van Young of course is among the most productive and influential Mexicanists of his generation, but he is modest about his impact: he presents his career as more illustrative than illustrious. This movement toward cultural history and, in particular, the exploration of subaltern mentalities, is the theme that unites the seven articles presented here (originally published between 1992 and 2010). The book itself follows a similar course, beginning with two bibliographic essays on haciendas and rural Latin America, then shifting to wide-ranging discussions of Mexico's colonial and independence periods, and finally to more theoretical treatments of regionalism, peasant consciousness, and the new cultural history. Throughout, Van Young recurs to what he considers the fruitful tension between economic and cultural paradigms; while evincing a certain nostalgia for the 1970s-80s heyday of hacienda studies, he ultimately recommends that cultural history colonize its materialist counterpart. These contributions are remarkably consistent in quality, sharing the same (abundant) virtues and (minor) flaws. Van Young, not surprisingly, is the ideal guide to the literature on colonial Mexico. He is vastly knowledgeable, so his surveys are sweeping without being superficial, his judgments balanced, perceptive, and comprehensive. He is always sensitive to the overlapping fields of force that constitute a specific intellectual environment. For instance, he attributes declining interest in the hacienda (and the concurrent rise of sexier topics such as resistance) to multiple causes, ranging from the lingering trauma of Vietnam to the stimulating example provided by scholarship on early modern Europe. But be also points out that the growing pile of monographs on rural estates and regions tended to adopt the same methodological and interpretive lenses, and thus lost their freshness. The field went into eclipse, even though fundamental topics, such as agrarian technology, had barely been addressed. Van Young also recognizes that Hispanic and Anglophone authors swim in very different waters. …