Abstract
This article offers a short resumé of recent Mexican historiography in the national (post-1810) period, noting three clusters of innovative research: post-independence politics; Porfirian economic history; and regional studies of the Mexican Revolution. It then addresses the recent call for historians of Mexico and Latin America to ‘reclaim the political’, analysing the implications of this kind of bold prescription which, it argues, is misguided in both historiographical and political terms.