The Last Emperor of Mexico by Edward Shawcross
'Hilarious, heartbreaking and utterly extraordinary.' Sunday Times 'Superbly entertaining' Financial Times 'Baroque, page-turning and often grimly funny' Tom Holland The bizarre and little known story of how a hubristic Archduke became the puppet Emperor of Mexico - with tragic results and pivotal historical consequences for Europe and America. 'One of the most monstrous enterprises in the annals of international history,' said Karl Marx. ' A madness without parallel since Don Quixote,' said a future French president. This is history's judgement on the events surrounding the ill-fated reign of Maximilian of Mexico, the young Austrian archduke who in 1864 crossed the Atlantic to assume a faraway throne. He had been convinced to do so by a duplicitous Napoleon III. Keen to spread his own interests abroad, the French emperor promised Maximilian a hero's welcome, which he would ensure with his own mighty military support. Instead, Maximilian walked into a bloody guerrilla war - and with a headful of impractical ideals and a penchant for pomp and butterflies, the so-called new emperor was singularly unequipped for the task. The ensuing saga would feature the great world leaders of the day, popes, bandits and queens; intrigue, conspiracy and cut-throat statecraft, as Mexico became the pivotal battleground in the global balance of power, between Old Europe and the burgeoning force of the New World: American imperialism. The Last Emperor of Mexico is the vivid history of this barely known, barely believable episode - a bloody tragedy of operatic proportions, and a vital debacle, the effects of which would be felt into the twentieth century and beyond.
After graduating from the University of Oxford, Edward Shawcross lived and worked in France, then South Korea and finally Colombia before returning to London where he completed a PhD at UCL. His research specialised on French imperialism in Latin America and the Mexican intellectual thought that underpinned the Second Mexican Empire.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780571360574 |
| ISBN 10 | 0571360572 |
| Title | The Last Emperor of Mexico |
| Author | Edward Shawcross |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Faber & Faber |
| Year published | 2022-01-20 |
| Number of pages | 336 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |