National Constitutions

These three volumes on early Mexican constitutional history represent an unprecedented compilation of 85 constitutional documents, including those from constitutional projects and reforms. Especially at the regional level, there has been a notable lack of an easily accessible edition, and this has now been remedied by the publication of volumes 2 and 3. For quite some time, historical research focused on the level of the central government. First and foremost, historians depicted the decline of Mexico after its independence in 1821 as compared to its late blossoming during the Spanish Empire. They regarded the decentralizing tendencies in many regions as a central cause of Mexico's decline, a process that neither the first Mexican Federal Constitution of 1824 (restored in 1847) nor the centralistic constitutions of 1835-36 and 1843 were able to remedy. By contrast, more recent research has emphasized the constructive efforts made by regional actors in the face of an extremely inauspicious political and social environment. These constitutional documents and projects do not merely allow us to draw conclusions about the lines of political conflict that existed during this epoch. The texts also provide a glimpse of the worldviews and expectations held by their authors in a particular regional context defined by the assumption of political responsibility during the early era of Atlantic constitutionalism. Not least on account of such insights, these three volumes as a whole are of great importance for understanding Mexican society during the first half of the 19th century.