Habsburgs on the Rio Grande

The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire

By: Raymond Jonas

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

The outbreak of the US Civil War provided an unexpected opportunity for political conservatives across continents. Mere decades after its founding, the United States had become a threat to European hegemony; instability in the United States could be exploited to lay a rival low. Meanwhile, Mexican antidemocrats needed a powerful backer to fend off the republicanism of Benito Juárez. When these two groups found each other, the Second Mexican Empire was born.

Raymond Jonas argues that the Second Mexican Empire, often dismissed as a historical sideshow, is critical to appreciating the globally destabilizing effect of growing US power in the nineteenth century. In 1862, at the behest of Mexican reactionaries and with the initial support of Spain and Britain, Napoleon III of France sent troops into Mexico and installed Austrian archduke Ferdinand Maximilian as an imperial ruler who could resist democracy in North America. But what was supposed to be an easy victory proved a disaster.

Based on research in five languages and in archives across the globe, Habsburgs on the Rio Grande fundamentally revises narratives of global history. Far more than a footnote, the Second Mexican Empire was at the center of world-historic great-power struggles—a point of inflection in a contest for supremacy that set the terms of twentieth-century rivalry.

©2024 The President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2025 Tantor Media

Informative and well written.

Thoroughly enjoyable book. I have only one grudge with it: it had relatively little to do with the history of the Rio Grande Valley, which was the main reason I bought it. The book is largely about Maximilian and Charlotte, how they made their decision to accept the crown of the Second Mexican Empire and how that empire started to fall apart almost from the beginning. I found the title provocative and hoped for a deeper connection or historical narrative based on the northern frontier of the former Spanish empire in the Americas. Still, this is a minor quibble; despite the fact that its focus was something other than what I thought, I enjoyed the book very much.

Missing Piece of History

I had no idea this was apart of Mexico’s history. Good story, good performance and a great listen.

Great History

Read this book if you want to know about the French intervention in Mexico in thr 1860s INDEPTH. Jonas gives a phenomenal overview!

Bringing together

I really liked how this book brought Europe’s history and impact on the Americas history into the for front balance of power once again ….