The Oxford Handbook of Revolutionary Elections in the Americas, 1800–1910

by Posada-Carbó, Eduardo; Robertson, Andrew W.

• ISBN13: 9780190265519
• ISBN10: 0190265515
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780197831465
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2026-04-03
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

The Oxford Handbook of Revolutionary Elections in the Americas, 1800-1910, presents a unique comparative political history spanning from Jefferson's election to the campaign that led to the Mexican revolution of 1910. By focusing on revolutionary elections-those of a contested, contentious nature that bore highly consequential outcomes-this volume sheds light on how institutions were inaugurated or transformed, how substantial issues were settled, and how political behaviour was changed.

After offering overviews of the electoral history of the United States, Latin America and Canada, the Handbook examines key elections in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, México, Perú, the US and Venezuela. Case studies of individual countries then serve as the basis for wider continental analysis of electoral violence, electoral corruption and electoral administration before concluding with some reflections on the need to approach the political history of the Americas from a comparative perspective. This wide lens makes this volume a novel contribution to the study of elections and an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to understand electoral politics and democracy in broader context.

Author Biography

Eduardo Posada-Carbó is Professor of the History and Politics of Latin America at Oxford University, and William Golding Senior Research Fellow at Brasenose College. He has been Cogut Visiting Professor at the Watson Institute, Brown University; Tinker Professor at the University of Chicago; and Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame. He has published extensively on Latin American history - much of his research has focused on the history of elections and democracy. His co-edited book (with Joanna Innes and Mark Philp), Re-Imagining Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1770-1870, was published by OUP in 2023.

Andrew W. Robertson teaches at the Graduate Center of Arts and Sciences of the City University of New York and at Lehman College, CUNY. He earned his D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1989. He was recently Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Kinder Institute for Constitutional Democracy and was also the A. Lindsay O'Connor Professor of American Institutions at Colgate University. He has been a founding supporter of the digital election data collection, "A New Nation Votes, 1787-1825" which has assembled all extant voting data for the United States from the Constitutional era until the revolutionary election of 1824.

Table of Contents

About the Editors
Contributors

Introduction
Eduardo Posada-Carbó and Andrew W. Robertson

PART I: CONTEXTS
Chapter 1: Revolutionary Elections in the United States. “Electocracy” in America
Jeffrey Pasley

Chapter 2: Suffrage and Electoral Practices in Nineteenth-Century Latin America
Hilda Sábato

Chapter 3: Elections, Self-Government, and Settler Colonial Rule in British North America
Jarett Henderson

PART II: REVOLUTIONARY ELECTIONS
Chapter 4: The First "Revolutionary Election"
Andrew Robertson

Chapter 5: The US Presidential Election of 1824
Donald Ratcliffe

Chapter 6: Elections in Mexico, 1828
Richard Warren

Chapter 7: Prelude to Dictatorship: the Elections of 1827, 1828 and 1829 in Buenos Aires
Marcela Ternavasio

Chapter 8: Road to Revolution: The 1834 Election in Lower Canadian Politics
Renaud Séguin

Chapter 9: The Reluctant President: Regime Change in Venezuela, 1834-35
Reuben Zahler

Chapter 10: The Revolutionary Election of 1836-37 in New Granada
Eduardo Posada-Carbó

Chapter 11: The Contested Peruvian Election of 1850 and the 1854 Revolution
Natalia Sobrevilla

Chapter 12: Contingency and the Canvass: Abraham Lincoln and the Pivotal Election of 1860
Jonathan Earle

Chapter 13: Contentious Elections and Democratization: The Peculiar Significance of the Presidential Contest of 1864
Richard Carwardine

Chapter 14: The Election of 1867 in Nova Scotia, Canada
David Martin

Chapter 15: The Peruvian Presidential Election of 1872
Carmen McEvoy

Chapter 16: The US Presidential Election of 1876
Mark Summers

Chapter 17: The Mexican Presidential Election of 1876
José Antonio Aguilar

Chapter 18: The Argentine Presidential Election of 1880
Paula Alonso

Chapter 19: The Brazilian Election of 1884
Jeffrey D. Needell

Chapter 20: The 1889 Elections in Costa Rica
Fabrice Lehoucq

Chapter 21: The Chilean Presidential Election of 1891
Macarena Ponce de León

Chapter 22: The Congressional Election of 1899 in Brazil
Paolo Ricci and Jacqueline Zulini

Chapter 23: The Cuban presidential election of 1905
Bonnie Lucero

Chapter 24: The Presidential Election of 1910 and the Mexican Revolution
Alicia Salmerón and Israel Arroyo

PART III: COMPARATIVE AND INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES
Chapter 25: Electoral Fraud and Revolutionary Elections
Ezequiel González Ocanto and Svitlana Chernykh

Chapter 26: A Tumultuous Decade: Elections in British North America (Canada) during the 1840s
Scott See

Chapter 27: The Age of Classical Electoral Governance
Fabrice Lehoucq

Chapter 28: Revolutionary Elections and the 'Loser's Consent'
Laurence Whitehead

Index