The Absurd and Tragic Dreams of Monarchy in Mexico: “The Last Emperor of Mexico”

What do you get when you mix the mad dreams of a half-mad French King and a few eccentric Mexicans desiring monarchy with the bored lives of Hapsburg royalty in need of a purpose for being? You get the failed effort to establish an Emperor of Mexico - a fabulous, bizarre, and sad tale of France’s Napoleon III’s effort to grasp control of Mexico. To tell this story of weirdness, you need a master storyteller and Edward Shawcross is the man for the job. It is a taut, compelling story that is not well-known in the United States -indeed, it is not well known in most of Latin America or in Mexico itself.

But I get ahead of myself. First a quick synopsis which I hope you find intriguing enough to read this excellent history. In 1860, as the US Civil War was looming on the horizon, France’s Napoleon III thought he had an opportunity to curb what he saw as rising American imperialism. Appalled by the Monroe Doctrine which effectively kicked European powers out of the Western Hemisphere for good, Napoleon persuaded a young (and some would say gullible) Austrian Archduke Maximilian and his countess wife, Carlota, to follow his troops to Mexico to be crowned Emperor of Mexico.

France’s troops eventually crushed the existing Mexican government and soldiers - but not without suffering heavy losses to bullets and disease. Once in power, Maximilian and Carlota ruled with a cold ruthlessness which immediately turned what little support they might have had among the populace against them.

But beyond the Mexican people, there was another force to contend with: The United States. Although distracted badly by the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was clearly aware Maximillian’s presence and the creation of a French threat to the US and the rest of the Hemisphere. Throwing their support behind Mexican resistance leader Benito Juárez, Maximilian soon found his power ebbing away.

I do not want to give away the rest of the book and will stop here in detailing this haunting tale. But it is an important tale that the Us does not get enough credit for: Throwing European monarchies and their dreams of returning monarchial empires (and the gold and silver that went with it) out forever. It is a story as much of a sad period of Mexico’s history as it is of the US’s determination to allow each nation of the Western Hemisphere to choose democracy. Mexico, of course, has gone through many permutations of crisis, democracy, violence, and change. But it is their choice - not the choice of a monarch in Europe.

This is a fantastic read and a critical one to better understand what shaped the Western Hemisphere we know today.