Review
"Christy Thornton has made a landmark contribution. Focusing on the pivotal case of Mexico and penetrating the condescending discourse of Northern policymakers and diplomats, she compellingly reads the construction of the twentieth century's great international governing institutions--the League of Nations, the IMF and the World Bank, the United Nations--from the outside in, through the optic of the Global South. Her clear-eyed, painstakingly researched analysis of Mexico's 'revolution in development' establishes the nation's critical constitutive role in the making of US global hegemony, while reconfiguring our understanding of Mexican foreign policy and the ideology and practice of the postrevolutionary state."Gil Joseph, Farnam Professor of History and International Studies, Yale University
"In this book, Christy Thornton guides us through the era when Mexico was assuming an active role in struggles to change the institutional and economic world order per se as a way to advance its nationalist development agenda. She masterfully brings alive the actors and pains and gains of Mexico's quest to transform key multilateral institutions for a more just system and to remove constraints on its own development process. Academics, students, and policy makers, especially in Mexico,will benefit enormously from this splendidly written, extremely well-documented contribution to the knowledge of Mexican economic history, with an international political economy and institutional building perspective."Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid, coauthor of Development and Growth in the Mexican Economy: A Historical Perspective
"Many scholars have asked what difference the Mexican Revolution made,but those who have addressed this question typically have framed it in strictly domestic terms. Yet, as Christy Thornton brilliantly demonstrates in this pathbreaking study, Mexican revolutionary nationalism manifested itself at the international level, from World War I on, in startling and significant ways. Revolution in Development promises to radically revise our understanding of the formation of the international economic order and to enable us to appreciate the role that Mexico and its Latin American allies played in the global debates about economic development."Barbara Weinstein, author of The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil
"This brilliant study posits Mexico as a subject rather than an object of global economic policy. Most history of capitalism is written through the lens of the Global North, and this book offers a crucial corrective, showing the Mexican postrevolutionary government as a critical advocate for the Global South."Jürgen Buchenau, Professor of History and Latin American Studies, UNC Charlotte
"How did Mexico—an indebted, poor country in the 1920s—manage to shape the governance of the global economy? Christy Thornton answers this question throughout eight chapters that eloquently document the strategy that Mexican delegates followed to fight the global imbalance of economic power and promote a revolution in international development...Therefore, Revolution in Development is required reading for understanding Mexico's current foreign policy and its potential implications for international governance. Although the book can be categorized as a work addressing the history of Mexican foreign policy, it also contributes significantly to the understanding of Mexican economic history." -David Escamilla-Guerrero, Economic History Review 74 no. 3 (2021).
"In Revolution in Development, Christy Thornton upends common assumptions that the United States and U.S. hegemony forged the global governance system. Instead, Thornton surprisingly and refreshingly demonstrates the foundational role of Mexico in this global system... Recovering the formative influence of the Revolution on Mexico's international approach and the unintended consequences of this approach, Thornton contributes a new model for the history of global governance." -Johanna Bockman, H-Diplo Roundtable July 2021.
From the Inside Flap
From the Back Cover
About the Author
Christy Thornton is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Latin American Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
