Empire · since 1821 · Southern North America
Mexico
Mexico's war of independence began with the priest Miguel Hidalgo's call to revolt in 1810 and ended in 1821, when the royalist officer Agustín de Iturbide joined the rebels; he briefly reigned as emperor, and Central America broke away in 1823. The young republic was unstable, and under the strongman Santa Anna it lost Texas in 1836 and, after war with the United States in 1846–48, about half its territory.
Benito Juárez's liberal reforms provoked civil war and a French invasion that installed the Austrian archduke Maximilian as emperor, executed in 1867. Porfirio Díaz then ruled for over three decades, building railways but concentrating land and wealth. The Mexican Revolution of 1910–20 overthrew him, and the party later called the Institutional Revolutionary Party governed from 1929 until the elections of 2000.
- Years
- since 1821
- Capital
- Mexico City
- Greatest extent
- 1822, about 4.90 million km²
- Region
- Southern North America
The First Mexican Empire: c. 4.43M km² plus c. 446,000 km² of Central America (Rodríguez & Vincent 1997)
Legacy
Mexico is the world's most populous Spanish-speaking country, and its revolution's land reform and nationalised oil industry became models for Latin America.
Rulers
- Agustín de Iturbide 1822–1823
Independence leader who reigned as Emperor Agustín I
- Antonio López de Santa Anna 1833–1855 (several terms)
Strongman who lost Texas and the war with the United States
- Benito Juárez 1858–1872
Liberal reformer who defeated the French intervention
- Maximilian I 1864–1867
Austrian archduke made emperor by France; executed
- Porfirio Díaz 1876–1880, 1884–1911
Dictator overthrown by the Mexican Revolution
- Lázaro Cárdenas 1934–1940
Redistributed land and nationalised the oil industry
Realms on the map
- Mexicans 1811–1819
- First Mexican Empire 1822–1823
- Federated Republic of Mexico 1824–1865
- Centralist Mexico 1836–1847
- Mexican Monarchists 1864
- Second Mexican Empire 1865–1867
- Mexico since 1868
- Maderistas 1911
Wars
- Second World War 1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945