The Empire´s Broken Mirror: The Second French Intervention in Mexico and Its Exclusion from French Imperial Historiography

Abstract

This article examines the reasons why the Second French Intervention in Mexico (1862–1867) has been systematically marginalized in French imperial historiography. Using a comparative approach with Algeria and Indochina, it argues that the Mexican episode constituted a failed attempt at hybrid imperialization, whose particularities challenged the classical categories of imperialism. Drawing on contributions from the new imperial history and postcolonial studies, the analysis shows that the marginalization of the Mexican case resulted less from its military failure than from a deliberate process of historiographical erasure. This erasure was undertaken by the Third Republic, which sought to dissociate its republican identity from the Bonapartist legacy.