Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico by Edward Beatty (review)

Dependency, a term that has been used to describe Latin America's economic backwardness vis-à-vis the so-called developed world, has had a contentious history, so much so that most scholars now shy away from it. Many claimed it was too rigid and static; others argued that it attributed too much causal weight to external forces and did not account for internal variables that could better explain political-economic outcomes. Edward Beatty begins his excellent book Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexicowith a reassessment of dependency, not by rehashing old debates but by breathing new life into the still-useful concept through a thorough examination of technology transfer in modernizing Mexico. Beatty argues that Mexico's incapacity to participate in the innovations of the first Industrial Revolution due to civil strife compelled modernizing elites to pin their hopes for development— progreso material—on the technologies and expertise of the industrialized North Atlantic nations. Whereas Mexico's leaders believed such technology imports would enable the nation to "catch up" and Mexican expertise to flourish, it had quite the opposite effect. Many technologies did transfer successfully and in many cases did drive economic growth, industrialization, and social change, but technology transfer also deepened dependence on foreign expertise and the technologies it generated. Beatty argues persuasively, however, that the dependence Mexico experienced was not predetermined by obdurate external structures or some iron law of history; it was contingent on political and social conditions prevailing in Mexico.

Beatty fills a huge gap in the historiography of technology in Mexico. Past scholarship has set its sights on popular cultural responses—appropriation, negotiation, or outright resistance—to new technologies or on elites' use of technology to emulate advanced, foreign cultures or to wield as political instruments of state building and social management. Beatty's meticulously researched book draws on numerous archives and collections in the United States and Mexico to trace "the contours and patterns of technological change in nineteenth-century Mexico in order to better understand the sharp contrast between the scarcity of innovation before 1870, rapid technological modernization thereafter, and persistent dependence on imported knowledge and expertise into the twentieth century" (p. 7). Beatty explains why certain technologies transferred better than others and how industrialists were forced to adapt to local social, geographic, and political conditions in order to install and operate new machinery.

The first chapters lay out the context for Mexico's massive technology transfer that stimulated industrial growth starting around 1870: the widening gap between Mexican and North Atlantic expertise during the first half of the century, followed by railroad construction that commenced in earnest in the early 1870s. Beatty then uses three case studies of technology transfer—the sewing machine, the Owens machine for glassmaking, and cyanidation for silver mining—and analyzes the social and economic changes they engendered and the successes and limits of their adoption and diffusion across Mexico. What makes this book such a joy to read is that it gathers momentum as one reads on. The final section, "Discussion," is brilliant. It is here that the depth and breadth of Beatty's knowledge of technology and industrialization in modern Mexico shines. It is also here that he presents a compelling new interpretation for why some technologies flourished in Mexico while others failed and why Mexico would remain dependent on foreign expertise, certain local technological innovations notwithstanding.

There are few shortcomings here. A more coherent discussion of tariff policy would have helped the reader better understand its importance as a factor in technology transfer. Beatty also alludes in passing on a couple of occasions to the import substitution policies of Porfirio Díaz's Mexico. This will puzzle many readers who associate this economic policy with mid-twentieth-century policymakers reacting against liberal economics and the dependence it purportedly fostered. These are quibbles that should not take away from the significant contributions this book makes to...