Abstract

GARNER, Paul. Sir Weetman Pearson and National Development in Mexico, 1889-1919. Estud. hist. mod. contemp. Mex [online]. 2005, n.30, pp.145-165. ISSN 0185-2620.

There continues to be a widespread belief that the relationship between the regime of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1880, 1884-1911) and overseas businessmen such as the British contractor and politician Sir Weetman Pearson constituted a type of Faustian pact be-tween corrupt elites and rapacious foreigners in a conspiracy to plunder Mexico's economic resources. This interpretation has its roots in nationalist structuralist and dependentista historiography, which posits that British predominance in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world can only be understood in terms of British "informal imperialism", or "honorary dominion". This article argues instead that the explanation is to be found in a series of interlocking and overlapping factors which relate not only to Pearson's modus operandi but most importantly, to the political and economic context of Victorian Britain and Porfirian Mexico.

Keywords : foreign investors; Anglo-Mexican relations; Compañía Mexicana de Petróleo El Águila; Porfirian Mexico; Victorian Age; Porfirio Díaz; Weetman Pearson; Tehuantepec National Railway.

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