1 French Imperial Projects in Mexico, 1820–1867 Edward Shawcross UCL Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2 I, Edward Shawcross, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 3 Abstract The standard narrative of nineteenth‐century imperialism in Latin America is one of US expansion and British informal influence. However, it was France, not Britain, which made the most concerted effort to counter US power through Louis‐ Napoléon’s creation of an empire in Mexico under the Habsburg Archduke Maximilian. Despite its significance to French and Mexican history, this intervention is invariably described as an “illusion”, an “adventure” or a “mirage”. This thesis answers the question why some Mexicans believed that the survival of the nation itself depended upon French intervention, and why France sought to impose an informal‐imperial model on Mexico. It does so by analysing the full context of Franco‐Mexican relations from 1820 onwards: French and Mexican ideas about monarchy in Latin America; responses to US expansion and the development of anti‐Americanism and pan‐Latinism; the consolidation of Mexican conservatism and the French Second Empire’s influence as a political paradigm; and, finally, the collaboration of some Mexican elites with French imperialism. This thesis draws upon French, Mexican, British and US sources, especially diplomatic dispatches, periodicals and published works. The approach challenges the separation between intellectual history and international history. By going beyond the conventional history of ideas focus on ‘canonical’ texts, it seeks to identify the extent to which currents of thought normally considered to be the preserve of well‐known intellectuals and politicians were part of a wider political culture that influenced French policy in Mexico, and shaped the contours of Mexican political discourse. An important dimension of the relationship between Mexico and France was the transatlantic and transnational context in which it developed, where competing conceptions of Mexico and France as nations, the role of Europe and the United States in the Americas and the idea of Latin America itself were challenged and debated. 4 Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................ 3 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... 7 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 8 The Historiography of the 1862‐67 French Intervention ................................................... 10 Mexican Political Thought and the Intervention: Monarchism, Conservatism and Liberalism ........................................................................................................................... 16 France as an Imperial Power .............................................................................................. 24 Informal Empire ................................................................................................................. 28 Pan‐Latinism: A Transnational and Imperial Idea .............................................................. 33 Sources ............................................................................................................................... 35 Structure of the Thesis ....................................................................................................... 37 Chapter One. French Policy towards Latin America, 1820-60 ............................................. 41 I. Enlightenment for Informal Empire ................................................................................ 43 II. Early Franco‐Mexican Relations: Diplomatic Distance, Commercial Closeness ............ 50 III. Wars of Civilisation in Mexico and the River Plate ....................................................... 58 IV. The Anglo‐French Partnership ...................................................................................... 75 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 79 Chapter Two. “Republics Descend into the Bloodiest Anarchy”: Monarchy and the Search for Order in Mexico ............................................................................................................... 83 I. “A Throne that was Subject to Ridicule from its Inception”: The First Mexican Empire and the Legacy of Iturbide ................................................................................................. 85 II. The Development of Monarchist Thought in Mexico after 1824 .................................. 97 III. The View from Europe: The Monarchist ‘Party’ in Mexico ......................................... 107 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 118 Chapter Three. The French and Mexican Response to the Texan Revolt (1835-36) and US Expansion: Towards Pan-Latinism ...................................................................................... 120 I. Early Franco‐Mexican Relations: A “Confraternity”? .................................................... 123 II. Texas: A Conflict of Races ............................................................................................ 126 III. The View from Mexico ................................................................................................ 137 IV. Monarchism, Anti‐Americanism and Pan‐Latinism .................................................... 142 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 155 Chapter Four. “The Western Question” ............................................................................. 158 I. “Always the Americans”: The US Threat to Mexico ...................................................... 160 5 II. “This Beautiful Cry, ‘Reaction’”: Mexican Conservatism and the European Revolutions of 1848 ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 156 III. “The European Party and the American Party”: The French Response to the Western Question ........................................................................................................................... 182 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 192 Chapter Five. The Limits of Informal Empire: French Intervention and the Mexican Second Empire ................................................................................................................................. 195 I. Order and Prosperity: The Mexican Case for Empire ................................................... 196 II. "You are Free, Govern Yourself!": The Architecture of Informal Rule ......................... 212 III. “The Empire Can do no more than Prolong its Agony”: The Failure of the Second Mexican Empire ............................................................................................................... 224 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 230 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 233 Chronologies, Map and Bibliography Chronology 1: Mexico, 1820‐61 ................................................................................... 253 Chronology 2: France, 1815‐70 .................................................................................... 258 Chronology 3: The French Intervention and the Second Mexican Empire, 1861‐67 ... 261 Map 1: Mexican Territorial Losses, 1836‐53 ................................................................ 265 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 266 6 Figure 1: A cartoon from a satirical Mexican periodical depicting Louis‐Napoléon, Emperor of the French. The caption translates idiomatically as “There is no pain without gain”, a more literal translation would read: “Where there are pleasures, there are risks”. La Orquesta (Mexico City), 7 May 1863, no page no. given. 7 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors: Professor Axel Körner for his invaluable comments and feedback, and especially Professor Nicola Miller for her inexhaustible patience, encouragement and forensic analysis. 8 Introduction In the south of Mexico City a former Franciscan monastery built in the sixteenth century today houses the Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones. The museum’s collection documents armed interventions in Mexico from independence to the Mexican Revolution, beginning with a Spanish attempt at reconquest in 1829 and ending with punitive US expeditions in 1916. According to a review in the LA Times, the museum was proof of Mexico’s “obsession” with intervention and a “repository” of “unhealed wounds to Mexico’s self‐esteem”.1 A more sympathetic interpretation is that the museum, opened in 1981, demonstrates that the history of post‐independent Mexico is one throughout which foreign powers repeatedly violated its national sovereignty. Rather than dwell upon perceived