Much of the so-called Age of Santa Anna in the history of independent Mexico remains a mystery - no decade is as poorly understood as the years from 1835 to 1846. Since its emancipation from Spain in 1821, Mexico had experimented with a monarchy and a federal republic, but each had brought chronic political turmoil and military intervention. In 1834, the ruling elite of middle-class hombres de bien concluded that a highly centralized republican government was the only solution. The central republic was thus set up in 1835, but once again civil strife, economic stagnation and military coups prevailed until 1846, when a disastrous war with the United States began, a war in which Mexico was to lose half of its national territory.

Using an enormous range of contemporary archives and printed material, Professor Costeloe explores the characters and background of the political and military leaders who decided to abandon federalism, the policies they introduced, the pressures and tensions they faced and their ultimate failure to bring about political stability and economic progress. Through his analysis of political parties and opinion, economic pressures and sociocultural change, he seeks to explain why the chronic instability of the 1820s continued unabated with the same plethora of conflicting ideas, issues, factions and revolts. In this first full-length study of what Professor Josefina Vazquez has recently labeled the forgotten years of Mexican history, Professor Costeloe sheds new light on such hitherto neglected personalities as Anastasio Bustamante, Manuel Gomez Pedraza and Mariano Paredes y Arillaga and, above all, on the career of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.