Dollars Over Dominion: The Triumph of Liberalism in Mexican—United States Relations, 1861-1867 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS185 Merchants," a dry, turgid affairwhich relies too much on too many tables which unimaginatively say much the same thing. In a broader context Wiener's difficulties in relating his statistical material to the body of the narrative reflect the excessively narrow conceptual base on which he built his work. By too closely identifying class interests with ownership of the means of production and by too mechanically equating politics with the expression of class interests, Wiener frequently struck this reviewer as an economic determinist whose reductionist conclusions left no room for a politics of cultural, ethnic, and ideological conflict botii within the planter class itself and between that class and rival groups jockeying for political power. For example, Wiener identified die Whigs as the political party of the planters, and in so doing overlooks the fact that planters were at least as likely to be Democrats by the 1850's; he defines planters, and insists that tiiey viewed themselves, "as a nonbourgeois class," tiius ignoring the distinct possibility that theplanters werestrugglingwithinthemselves to deny or purge that very acquisitive, entrepreneurial drive which was essential to their economic survival in a very competitive marketplace; and, in a critical oversimplification, he slights theexcruciatingimpact of the war and its casualties on the perceptions and sensibilities of the planters and their sons and assumes tiiat because the landholding planter elite in the Alabama black belt survived the war largely intact (pp. 8-34), any claim they subsequentiy made "about die world they had lost" amounted to a sham. In conclusion, I feel that the serious weaknesses of the study flow inexorably from its very considerable strengths. Wienerhas provided us witii a closely argued and perceptive account of the largely successful efforts of Alabama's planter class to reestablish its political and economic hegemony after the Civil War and has forced us to revise any neat formulations which posit the rise of powerful new classes from the ashes of the planter regime. However, the rigid economic focus of die work belies its very title which promises an examination of the "social origins" of postwar Alabama. There is, in fact, little analysis of either social or cultural conditions and but scant treatment ofdie CivilWar, die watershed in the lives of this generation of Alabamians. Nonetiieless, any compelling reinterpretation of the New South must confront directly the framework laid down by Professor Wiener for Alabama. University of North CarolinaWilliam L. Barney DoUars Over Dominion: The Triumph of Liberalism in Mexican— United States Rehtions, 1861-1867. By Thomas D. Schoonover. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978. Pp xx, 316. $17.50.) The "central thesis" of tiiis book "is that the Liberal party in Mexico and 186CIVIL WAR HISTORY the Republican party in the United States shared an ideology—laissez faire liberalism—which led them to define tiieir respective problems ... as interrelated, and which alleviated some of die stress on United States-Mexican relations during the crisis years of the 1860s, while permitting the mutually desired American economic penetration of Mexico during the 1860s and 1870s." In developing this diesis the author utilizes an enormous body of both primary and secondary sources, including Mexican manuscript and archival holdings previously unfamiliar to most Civil War historians. To have written so thoroughly researched a work on such an important topic as Mexican-American relations during die 1860's is a considerable achievement. This volume, however, has serious flaws. Perhaps the most regrettable defect of the book is the virtual incoherence of much of the writing. Here are only a few examples of the author's imprecise language. A group of people "stemmed from New Orleans." "A certain flair for words . . . found vent." A diplomatist's "credentials . . . rested upon his service ." The "agreements . . . obtain significance." People "viewed their projects invarious lights." Some "diplomats interpreted the foreign intervention into Mexico in terms similar to liberal opinion." Someone registered "complaints with die foreign intervention." "Romero . . . urged upon him the dangerous precedent of that course." And so on. Additional deficiencies in the author's writing style are (1) his penchant for using grandiose, imprecise language to express relatively simple, familiar ideas; (2) his excessive use of jargon (such as "concretization," "implementing," and "generate"); (3...