The Last Emperor of Mexico: The Dramatic Story of the Habsburg Archduke Who Created a Kingdom in the New World

The Last Emperor of Mexico: The Dramatic Story of the Habsburg Archduke Who Created a Kingdom in the New Worldby Edward Shawcross

In the 1860s, Napoleon III, intent on curbing the rise of American imperialism, sent French troops to Mexico, overthrew its government, and replaced a republic with a monarchy, persuading a young Austrian archduke and a Belgian princess to leave Europe and become the emperor and empress. Then only thirty-one and twenty-three years old and political novices, Maximilian and Carlota arrived in a Mexico ruled by terror, where revolutionary fervor was barely suppressed by French troops. As they redecorated palaces and created a court in a place they knew nothing about, Mexico's great liberal leader Benito Juarez continued to fight the new regime. When the United States, now clear of its own Civil War, aided Juarez's forces in pushing back Maximilian's imperial soldiers, the French army withdrew, abandoning the young couple. The regime fell apart. Maximilian was executed by a firing squad and Carlota descended into madness, spending the rest of her long life secluded in a Belgian castle.

Thus began a new era of imperialism in the Americas -- one led by the United States, which had entered the Franco-Mexican fray with the aim of ejecting Europe from the Americas to make space for its own ambitions. The United States stepped into the vacuum left by Europe, and, as scholar Edward Shawcross argues, established itself as a global superpower for the first time.

Assiduously researched and vividly told, The Last Emperor of Mexico is a spectacular story of European hubris, of imperialist aspirations clashing with revolutionary fervor, and of the Old World breaking from the new.

Basic Books, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 2021