Johnson’s Mexico

Johnson’s 1863 map of Mexico and the Southern United States.

Published during the American Civil War, this map shows Mexico at a similarly critical moment in its cultural and political historiography. President Benito Juarez had endured and won the War of Reform and succeed in instituting many of his liberal policies aimed at separation of church and state, integration of indigenous populations and secular education as the means for economic growth and development. However, part of his policies included withholding the payments of loan interest to European creditors, including France, Britain and Spain. This was not taken well, and Napoleon III launched an occupational invasion of Mexico and announced support for a puppet emperor – Maximilian I, an Austrian. Guerrilla fighting persisted until 1867, when a combination of war weariness and pressure from the United States forced France’s abandonment of the emperor, who was captured and executed.

Interestingly, in 1865 after the end of the Civil War, one method of possible proposed reconciliation between the North and South included a joint action against French Mexico!