Suchergebnisse

"Highly original work places the growth of an important state in the national and, at the same time, familial environment. Argues that the Reform must be seen in the context of a general economic upturn begun in the 1840s"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58

Scholars generally agree that after 1810 the Mexican economy, shattered by destruction of property and flight of population and capital during the long wars for independence, entered a severe depression. It has usually been assumed that this depression persisted well beyond mid-century, exacerbated by political instability, banditry, and intermittent civil warfare. This assumption was given shape and substance by John Coatsworth's influential 1978 article, which presented a picture of not merely miserable but deteriorating economic conditions for at least a half-century after 1810. Coatsworth calculated that per capita and total income fell until "sometime after 1860" and that a solid recovery was delayed until after 1880.

Nowhere, perhaps, is the often-remarked historiographical bias in favour of social/economic studies for the colonial period and political/ institutional studies for the national period more jarring than in treatments of the activities of the Mexican church before and after independence.1 The position of the church in the colonial economy has been the subject of several specialised works and is widely regarded in broader histories as most significant.2 But students of independent Mexico have usually focused on the church's role in the political arena, characterising the politics of the period from 1821 to 1856 as, in essence, a battle for supremacy betweenthe church and the state, or in a slightly different formulation, as a struggle between liberalism and conservatism.3

The article focuses on the attempts of the Mexican church in the state of Michoacan, to preserve and enhance its assets in the face of unprecedented challenges presented by changes in the regional economy between 1810 and 1856. Economic trends im Michoacan and church asset management during the post-1810 depression, from 1825 to 1845, and after 1845, is scrutinized