To study the pronunciamiento, Will Fowler argues, is to study the history and politics of the first decades of Mexico's independence. Literally translated as ‘pronouncement’, this was a statement issued by a range of political actors, civilian and military, listing grievances against the state. Although it was backed by the threat of force, Fowler explains, the pronunciamiento was not a coup d’état or a revolt because it did not necessarily aim to bring down the government. Rather, the intention was to compel the government to address the concerns outlined in the pronouncement, or else violence might ensue. Pronunciamientos, therefore, are best understood as ‘forceful negotiations’ and, with some notable exceptions, were comparatively peaceful. Fowler traces their evolution, and argues that they flourished in the context of a weak state that was unable to impose its authority on the nation or to defend the recently founded institutions. Over 1,350 pronunciamientos were issued in Mexico in the years 1821–58, and they played a key part in every major political change. By writing the history of the pronunciamiento, therefore, Fowler notes, he has ‘inadvertently [written] a concise history of Independent Mexico’ (p. 255). This history is the culmination of Fowler's 16 years of research into the pronunciamiento, and the fourth and final volume of a series funded by the UK-based Arts and Humanities Research Council.

The first chapter defines the pronunciamiento, establishes its typology, and explains the process by which most pronunciamientos played out, before reviewing the historiography. The remaining four chapters are chronological (1820–1; 1821–31; 1832–42; 1843–58) and follow the same structure, which includes a narrative of major political events for the period and an analysis of the main clusters of pronunciamientos. Running through the work is the concept of ‘mimetic insurrectionism’, developed most extensively in Chapter 2. Fowler defines this as the propensity of people in a context of ‘acute social injustice, political oppression, and or/economic as well as racial inequality’ to copy examples of insurrectionary tactics if these are seen to have worked (p. 40). Fowler argues that the pronunciamiento became the dominant way of doing politics in the early decades of independent Mexico because the first examples of its use were strikingly effective, bringing about major political change relatively peacefully. The key example is Agustín de Iturbide's Plan of Iguala (1821), which declared Mexican independence. The plan became the template for subsequent would-be insurrectionists and their pronunciamientos primarily because ‘it worked’ (p. 75).

The chapters dealing with the early years of the pronunciamiento are the strongest. Fowler traces the evolution of the pronunciamiento from the preserve of high-ranking army officers to a semi-legitimate form of democratic representative politics practised by a range of actors, including the ‘subaltern’. He demonstrates that the claim to represent the will of the people that was made in many pronunciamientos was not mere window dressing – the ideas behind them were vigorously debated within the communities that issued them. Fowler gives fascinating insights into the local decision-making process: some pronunciamientos recorded meeting minutes, while others included the names of those who did not agree with the majority view. The waves of actas de adhesión (acts of adhesion) that often followed in support of the initial pronunciamiento can, therefore, be taken as a genuine expression of the popular will, especially within a context of nascent and imperfect representative politics. This, combined with its efficacy in bringing about change, explains why the pronunciamiento ‘went viral’ in the 1830s.

After that decade, however, Fowler finds that the pronunciamiento takes a darker turn. Pronunciamentos became less forceful negotiation, more forceful change; the state responded by routinely executing those who launched them. The end of compromise did not, however, mark the end of this form of insurrection. Rather, it transformed pronunciamientos into what Fowler terms ‘disguised coup d’états’, that were ‘essentially about overthrowing whoever was in power’ (p. 254). This is a slightly jarring conclusion in a book that sets out to revise the conventional view that pronunciamientos were ‘nothing more than schemes for plunder and power’, as one contemporary foreign observer described them (p. 19). Given the breadth of the monograph, Fowler can give only limited space to the ideas behind these later revolts. This, perhaps unwittingly, furthers the impression that these pronunciamientos were mere symptoms of a chaotic time in Mexico's politics, when factions were interested in little besides power. But, to take just one example where ideas played an important role, the 1845 Plan of San Luis Potosí was backed by politicians who wanted to replace Mexico's republican institutions with a monarchy. Even if the intention was to overthrow the government, the instigators did not merely seek power for its own sake. They aimed to implement a political programme that they hoped would end Mexico's cycle of instability – of which the pronunciamiento, as Fowler acknowledges, was both a symptom and a significant cause.

The concept of mimetic insurrectionism is problematic. Many of the comparisons Fowler cites, such as the 1848 revolutions or the Arab Spring, seem qualitatively different to the pronunciamiento. They triggered a wave of similar insurrections, but these were short lived and did not become endemic to political life. Moreover, if by the 1840s and 1850s the pronunciamiento was a mere tool for factions that lusted after power, resulting in continual violence, why did others still emulate them? Fowler explores how the pronunciamiento became so embedded within Mexican political culture that it was an essential legitimating part of any revolt, divorced from its initial incarnation as a means of relatively peaceful negotiation with state power. This, more than the idea of imitation, seems from Fowler's own account to be the driving force behind the endurance of the pronunciamiento, particularly in its later years.

Fowler breaks new ground in demonstrating the central function of the pronunciamiento in Mexican politics; in doing so, he has written an accessible and concise history of the period. Independent Mexico is the place to start for anyone interested in this form of insurrectionary politics that defined the first decades of independence.