Emilio Rabasa and the Survival of Porfirian Liberalism
Subtitle: the Man, his Career, and his Ideas, 1856-1930
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: August 20, 2008
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9780804758765
Subjects: History; Biography / Autobiography; History: World; General; History / Mexico; Latin America - Mexico
Description: "This is an intellectual and career biography of Emilio Rabasa, the eminent Mexican jurist, politician, novelist, diplomat, journalist, and historian who opposed the Revolution of 1910-20, spent the years 1914 to 1920 in exile, but returned and was reintegrated into Mexican life until his death in 1930. Though he is still idolized by the juridical community of Mexico City, little is known about Rabasa beyond his principal publications. He was a reserved, enigmatic man who kept no personal archive and sought a low public profile." "Hale reveals unknown aspects of his life, career, and personality from two extensive bodies of correspondence - with Jos Yves Limantour, finance minister from 1893 to 1911, and William F. Buckley, Sr., American lawyer and petroleum entrepreneur. He also analyzes Rabasa's political, juridical, and social ideas, arguing that they demonstrate continuity and even survival of late nineteenth-century liberalism through the revolutionary years and beyond. Rabasa's was a transformed liberalism, based on scientific politics drawn from European positivism and historical constitutionalism - an elitist rejection of abstract doctrines of natural rights and egalitarian democracy, emphasizing strong centralized yet constitutionally limited authority and empirically based economic development."--Jacket.