Approaching the Mexican Revolution:
Books, Maps, Documents

Early Interpretations of the Mexican Revolution

The Mexican Revolution became the subject of interpretation almost from its inception. Noted Mexican politicians and intellectuals, some of whom even participated in the Revolution, published contemporary accounts. From the 1920s through the middle of the twentieth century, historians and observers have tried to make sense of the events following the fall of Porfirio Díaz. Although writers generally sympathized with Francisco I. Madero’s revolutionary movement, it was the American historian Frank Tannenbaum who first understood the revolution as a populist, agrarian, and nationalist movement by rural citizens to free themselves from the elitist Díaz regime. He interpreted the Revolution as a struggle that marked two distinct periods in Mexican history.

Ramón Prida, From Despotism to Anarchy, 1914.

Frank Tannenbaum, The Mexican Agrarian Revolution, 1929.

Frank Tannenbaum, Peace by Revolution: An Interpretation of Mexico, 1933.

Andrés Molina Enríquez, Esbozo de la historia de los primeros diez años de la revolución agraria de México (de 1910 a 1920), hecho a grandes rasgos, 1933.

Luis Cabrera, et. al. The Purposes and Ideals of the Mexican Revolution. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science LXIX. January, 1917.

Charles Curtis Cumberland, Mexican Revolution: Genesis Under Madero, 1952.

J. Fred Rippy, José Vasconcelos, and Guy Stevens, Mexico, 1928.