Gedenkschriften der omwenteling in het rijk van Mexico

This Dutch language edition of the Memoirs of the Mexican Revolution, written by the Philadelphia-born merchant William Davis Robinson, was an eyewitness account of Mexican independence from Spain, originally published in English in 1820 (in Philadelphia). A two-volume edition appeared a year later in London in 1821. After a failed business transaction in Venezuela that led to his expulsion, Robinson ended up joining the insurgents in Veracruz. The undisputed hero of Robinson’s text is Xavier Mina, whose expedition to New Spain in 1817 is told in great detail, and many of the passages are dedicated to promoting the role of the United States as a leader of the “free world in the Western Hemisphere”. The Dutch translators of this edition chose to trim the two-volume London edition because of its limited literary qualities and the all-too-obvious biases of its author.