"“The Ex-Emperor in Exile: Agustín de Iturbide in London, 1824” in Kirsten McKenzie and Jan C. Jansen, eds. Mobility and Coercion in an Age of War and Revolutions, c.1750-1830. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2024, pp. 258-279. (2025)

“When We Were an Empire” The Monarchical Experiment in Mexico (1864-1867)

2010

"Constitutional Projects for the Division of Powers in Mexico during Iturbide's Empire, 1821–1823," Journal of Latin American Studies, Available on CJO 2014 doi:10.1017/S0022216X14001059

This article examines the division of powers established in a number of constitutional projects presented during Mexico’s first Empire (1821-1823). The essay rejects the idea, present in much recent historiography, that constitutional debate in Mexico was exclusively shaped by the experience of Spanish government. Instead it argues that the Empire´s politicians drew on a wide range of theories, ideas and examples from other constitutional systems.

“Agustín de Iturbide: From the Pronunciamiento of Iguala to the Coup of 1822”, en Will Fowler (ed.), Forceful Negotiations. The Origins of the Pronunciamiento in Nineteenth-Century Mexico, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2010, pp. 22-46.

Mexico, Independence, and Trans Atlantic Exchange, 1822 24

Movements for political independence swept across Spanish America in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. A succession of New World colonies broke away, forming a string of independent countries from Argentina in the south to Mexico in the north. In the hemisphere, only the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish dominion by 1833. The end of three hundred years of colonial rule opened not only a new epoch for the internal history of these nations but also a new set of Atlantic relationships with European states.

The Defence of Iturbide or the Defence of Federalism? Rebellion in Jalisco and the Conspiracy of the Calle de Celaya, 1824

Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2004

This paper investigates a planned rebellion in favour of Agustín de Iturbide organised by a group of his supporters in Guadalajara, Jalisco, in 1824. It shows that the rebels in Guadalajara were in close communication with a second cadre of conspirators in Mexico City. By examining the various plans drawn up by the rebels, the article demonstrates the existence of two separate and apparently contradictory aims for the rebellion: the return of Iturbide and the defence of federalism. The question posed by the paper is: does this discovery indicate a coalition between federalists and iturbidistas against the central government in Mexico City? KEYWORDS: Iturbide, Guadalajara, Calle de Celaya, rebellion, federalism, Spaniards.

"Recovered Possibilities: Moving the Seats of Empire from England and Spain to the Americas"

Atlantic Studies , 2019

During the 1760s, after decades of strong economic and population growth in Britain’s American colonies, the notion that the capital of the imperial state would move from London to some American city became increasingly common. A similar notion circulated in the Spanish world after Napoleon’s invasion of Spain in 1808. Some foresaw that the seat of government, along with the royal family, would flee the French army in order to find an asylum in Spain’s American colonies as the Portuguese Braganzas had done in November 1807. Long after King Ferdinand VII was taken captive by Napoleon, a number of Spanish Americans invited the imprisoned monarch to come to their lands to reign his empire in safety. Both the English and the Spanish plans, of course, came to naught, which is likely why scholars have not paid them serious attention. Yet these discussions about the possible removal of the seat of government to America tell us much about popular understandings of the nature of imperial states during this period. They complicate traditional understandings about the primacy of imperial centers, understandings that have been nursed by teleological historical narratives that trace the emergence of the independent nation-state and have limited our abilities to acknowledge the existence of evidence that does not fit within those narratives. And although recent scholarship has argued that both the British and Spanish early modern imperial states were both highly decentralized, this scholarship has yet to account for the seemingly contradictory simultaneous persistence of imperial centers. This essay considers these issues by analyzing the discourse about moving the capital of the empire in the British and Spanish worlds during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Non-Destructive Study of the Independence Act of the Mexican Empire of 1821

MRS Proceedings, 2011

ABSTRACTIn 2010, Mexico celebrates 200 years since the beginning of the Independence war that gave rise to the independent Mexican Empire in 1821, and afterwards to the Mexican Republic. This document had two original copies; one of them was lost in a fire at the beginning of twentieth century, while the second was stolen and finally returned to Mexico in 1960, after a long history of events. This document is kept in the General Archives of Nation (AGN), Mexico.The “Independence Act of the Mexican Empire of 1821” was written on paper using iron-gall inks. The document has two parts: a declaration and a set of 36 signatures of Iturbide and other people involved in establishing the Independence of Mexico.The non-destructive study of this document was carried out in order to answer several questions: legitimacy, composition of the materials (paper and inks), deterioration conditions and a possible sequence of writing and the signatures. For these purposes several in situ techniques wer...

“America Has Escaped from our Hands": Rethinking Empire, Identity and Independence during the Trienio Liberal in Spain, 1820-1823

European History Quarterly, 2011

Spanish nationalists lauded the Constitution of 1812, which erased the boundaries of colony and metropole. By the early 1820s, however, separatists narrated 300 years of American history as a Biblical tale of enslavement, with nations ultimately freed from captivity by the heroism and martyrdom of liberators such as Hidalgo. Contrary to the idea that an apathetic metropolis turned away from its empire, this article recovers a vibrant public sphere in which debates raged over independence, nationality and the possibilities of constitutional monarchy. As Spain and Mexico shared a liberal political culture, it is clear that national identities diverged only inasmuch as nationalists insisted upon distinctive cultural and historical roots and the definitive separation of the ‘two Spains’.

Latin American Research Review, 2018

Alejandro Cañeque, "the King's living image: the culture and politics of viceregal power in colonial Mexico". Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 35 (2). pp. 303-305.

Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth history, 2007