From Colony to Nationhood in Mexico

In an age of revolution, Mexico''s creole leaders held aloft the Virgin of Guadalupe and brandished an Aztec eagle perched upon a European tricolor. Their new constitution proclaimed ''the Mexican nation is forever free and independent''. Yet the genealogy of this new nation is not easy to trace. Colonial Mexico was a patchwork state whose new-world vassals served the crown, extended the empire''s...