The Mexican Revolution was like no other: it was fueled by no vanguard party, no coherent ideology, no international ambitions; and ultimately it served to reinforce rather than to subvert many of the features of the old regime it overthrew. Alan Knight argues that a populist uprising brought about the fall of longtime dictator Porfirio Diaz in 1910. It was one of those "relatively rare episodes in history when the mass of the people profoundly influenced events." In this first of two volumes Knight shows how urban liberals joined in uneasy alliance with agrarian interests to install Francisco Madero as president and how his attempts to bring constitutional democracy to Mexico were doomed by counter-revolutionary forces. The Mexican Revolution illuminates on all levels, local and national, the complex history of an era. Rejecting fashionable Marxist and revisionist interpretations, it comes as close as any work can to being definitive. The two-volume Mexican Revolution won the Albert Beveridge Prize of the American Historical Association in 1986 for best history of the post-1492 Americas and the Bolton Prize of the Conference on Latin American History in 1987. Alan Knight is Professor of Latin American History, Oxford University, and Director of the Latin American Centre, St. Antony's College, Oxford.