A social revolution must concern itself immediately with the past, since it is a basic conviction of the revolutionist that the moribund and corrupt order which causes society's distress makes impossible the kind of future that he sees as desirable and necessary. Old institutions, structures, and habits of thought must be abolished or severely modified, and persons who direct or personify those vestiges must change, step aside, or be removed from positions of power and influence.

Religious institutions and beliefs present a peculiarly complicated problem to a social revolution. Invariably associated with traditional ways, they are often too deeply rooted in the national mentality and sentiment to admit of any easy or rapid modification. Obliteration, even if though to be the desirable solution, is usually recognized as impossible; and to change mass attitudes by persuasion alone, is at best a long and uncertain process.

The economic transformations which the new exigencies of capitalism brought to Brazil at the end of the second half of the nineteenth century caused the emergence of new urban sectors, the end of slavery, the utilization of free labor and the rise of a dynamic agrarian bourgeoisie. These in turn provoked a crisis of hegemony within the dominant classes in the final moments of the Empire which reached the sphere of political domination. Their loss of hegemony resulted in administrative inertia and the impression of a power vacuum since the coffee bourgeoisie was not yet able to exercise the direction of the State alone. With the advent of the Republic, it fell to the army to temporarily occupy power and to institutionalize the new regime, while the bourgeoisie was organizing itself to take charge definitively in a hegemonic form.

While the negotiations between the United States and Ecuador in the period 1909 to 1913 came to no fruitful conclusion, they still remain a subject of interest because in microcosm they illustrate so well how the Department of State operated in the Taft administration. The negotiations embraced all the standard considerations: strategy, vested American interests, projected loans, power politics, and “ up-lift.” The Department's interest in Ecuador quickened in this period because Ecuador owned the Galápagos Islands, an archipelago which lay six hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador and about one thousand miles southwest of the Isthmus of Panama, where the canal was under construction.

Scholarly studies of the Mexican revolutionary period seldom have approached the subject from the standpoint of how this momentous struggle was actually waged by its combatants. While considerable investigation has rendered valuable insights into leading personalities and movements of the time, no comparable effort has been made to unravel the myriad military complexities and paradoxes of one of the major wars waged on the North American continent.

A case in point concerns the foreign soldiers who fought side by side with Mexican troops in the rebel armies. Such military personnel are commonly referred to in modern-day parlance as mercenaries, a term indicating “paid soldiers in the service of a foreign country.” However, not all foreigners who served in the Revolution were professional soldiers for hire, nor did all have previous military experience. Such words and phrases as soldiers of fortune or adventurers, in vogue during the period, more clearly define the status of these combatants as “men fighting for pay or love of adventure under the flag of any country.” Be that as it may, all of the terms given above are basically synonymous and can be used interchangeably to refer to the foreign volunteers who joined the various armed factions contending for supremacy in Mexico.

The long-traditional view of the Roman Catholic Church in Spanish America as a monolithic, wealthy, and all powerful institution has been gradually modified by successive studies over the last thirty years. From these examinations emerges the picture of a complex institution characterized by diversity, and internal conflict. New research continues to enlarge and clarify understanding of the Church's role as an institution of the Spanish empire.

What follows will, in highlighting the colonial Church's relationship to the Spanish crown, add to this view of it as a complex and diverse institution. An examination of crown policy with regard to Church finance in the sixteenth century shows that the episcopal hierarchy of the Mexican colonial Church had a subordinate relationship to the crown in the era of the Counter Reformation. Rather than a strong Church influencing the crown, what emerges is the portrait of a relatively weak, dependent institution, supported by the king. The secular church hierarchy had only enough power to carry out its function and serve as a counterpoint to the religious orders, not enough to achieve financial independence on its own. The basis for this relationship lies in the patrimonial nature of Castilian government and its dominant position over the Church hierarchy because of the Patronato Real.

Early in his political life the famous British statesman, W. E. Gladstone, had close contact with colonial problems. His maiden speech in the House of Commons, June 3, 1833, was a defense of his father against charges that slaves were mistreated on the Gladstone plantations in Demerara; his first government post was that of Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for the Colonies; before the end of the 1830's he had served on many committees which studied questions relating to the colonies; and in 1846 he was Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. In 1835 and again in 1849 he drafted pamphlets on the British colonial empire; by mid-nineteenth century he was a leading advocate of colonial self-government; and his speech “Our Colonies” at Chester, November 12, 1855 (published as a pamphlet), was a clear statement of his creed that “ freedom and voluntaryism ” should govern the relationship between Britain and the overseas portions of the British Empire. While in later years noncolonial issues received most of his attention, he never abandoned his faith in freedom as the basic remedy for intra-imperial problems. In the closing years of his political career he fought magnificently but vainly to apply that principle of freedom (which had stilled colonial discontent) to the age-old Irish question.

The Rebellion of Paraguay (1721–1735) reveals much about imperial administration in eighteenth century Spanish South America. It demonstrates the contradictions built into an imperial structure in which a variety of people and groups with conflicting vested interests tried to influence policy. In the case of Paraguay, this situation contributed directly to rebellion. Although it sprang immediately from local economic grievances, the Rebellion was also caused by a jurisdictional dispute over who should direct the affairs of Paraguay, the audiencia of Charcas or viceroy of Peru. It thus raised the question of whom local inhabitants should obey when their superiors disagreed.