This award-winning history, now available in paperback, explores eighteenth-century San Antonio de Bxar, a community on the periphery of Spain's North American frontier. From this struggling settlement eventually developed modern San Antonio, Texas. In spite of isolation and neglect, many of the settlers, veterans of frontier colonies farther south, founded San Antonio on centuries-old institutions. Although the colonists often feuded with one another in the early years, frontier political and economic forces molded them into a single community by the end of the eighteenth century. Crisp...

This volume considers the responses to the social and institutional norms of the Spanish colonial system along Spain's northern frontier provinces.

The rich and unique history of the Lone Star State is presented in this new book through the lives of a variety of Texans who put a human face on the state's history. Biographical sketches of fifteen famous and little-known men and women of different colors, religions, and economic backgrounds offer new insight into the history of the state. Written by some of the leading and rising scholars of Texas history, this book presents the major themes and periods in Texas history, including the settling of Anglo-Americans in the region, bringing an American democracy that supported slavery; the...

These seven original essays offer the first ethnohistorical interpretation of Spanish-Indian interaction from Florida to California. The indigenous peoples in the borderlands were hunter-gatherers or agriculturalists whose lives differed substantially from the lives of Indians in large-scale hierarchical societies of central Mexico. As a result, Spain's entry and expansion varied throughout the borderlands. How did indigenous peoples fare under Spanish rule from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries? The contributors to this book discuss the social, demographic, and economic impacts...

Tejanos (Texans of Mexican heritage) were instrumental leaders in the life and development of Texas during the Mexican period, the war of independence, and the Texas Republic. Jesus F. de la Teja and ten other scholars examine the lives, careers, and influence of many long-neglected but historically significant Tejano leaders who were active and influential in the formation, political and military leadership, and economic development of Texas. In Tejano Leadership in Mexican and Revolutionary Texas, lesser-known figures such as Father Refugio de la Garza, Juan Martin Veramendi, Jose Antonio...