The English version of La Cristiada is the last of several versions to appear, which is paradoxical, since it has played a decisive role in the publication of my work in various forms. The work originated as a thesis of 2,500 mimeographed pages, at the end of seven years' research – a manuscript unpublishable as it stood, from which publishers recoiled!

It is the Cambridge University Press who deserve the credit for having restored the author's hope and awakened the interest of other publishers; the encouragement of its academic readers and the invitation to sign a contract to transform this enormous manuscript into a different book led me to rewrite entirely (and not simply to summarise) my thesis. Reassured by the scholarly guarantee that this commitment on the part of the Cambridge University Press represented, the other publishers made up their minds. Siglo XXI published the reconstructed thesis in Mexico (1973–4), recast (but not rewritten) in three almost self-contained volumes (La Guerra de los Cristeros; El Conflicto entre la Iglesia y el Estado; Los Cristeros: sociedad e ideologia), under the general title La Cristiada, Gallimard published in 1974, in Paris, Apocalypse et Révolution au Mexique: la guerre des Cristeros (a collection of documents with commentary), and Payot, also in Paris, brought out in 1975 La Christiade: l'Eglise, l'Etat et le Peuple dans la Révolution Mexicaine, a book that corresponds to, without entirely duplicating, the present English edition.