Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800–1850
2016; Oxford University Press; Volume: 103; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/jahist/jaw219
ISSN1945-2314
Tópico(s)Archaeology and Natural History
ResumoAndrew J. Torget's Seeds of Empire reframes the history of “how Mexico's Far North became the American Southwest” by prioritizing global economics, localized politics, and regional opportunities over manifest destiny explanations (p. 9). Torget successfully captures “the three driving forces—cotton, slavery, and empire”—that he contends “shaped the unlikely evolution of this borderlands territory from Comanche hinterland to American state” (p. 6). He inspects slavery and the cotton economy, the rise and fall of the Texas republic, and transatlantic history to craft a compelling account that bridges U.S., Mexican, borderlands, and southern history and expands on such works as Brian Schoen's The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War (2009) and Andrés Reséndez's Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and Mexico, 1800–1850 (2004). Principal topics in Seeds of Empire include slavery and cotton seeping into Stephen F. Austin's land grants, the critical role of Tejano leaders and the slavery debates of the mid-1820s, with key figures such as José María Viesca alongside Anglo-Texans forging a gradual emancipation formula aimed at protecting slavery. Torget aptly positions the Texas Revolution as a revolt defined by “a complex tangle of cotton, slavery, and Mexican federalism” with Anglos and Tejanos defending that trinity (p. 140). Agustín Viesca (brother of José) surfaces here, as do the Anglo majority that came to embrace independence in 1836 because they could not disentangle “questions of federalism in Texas” from “the slave-based agriculture that supported growing colonies of expatriate Americans in the region” (p. 174). Torget also interweaves the global cotton trade with England, the financial flows in and out of New Orleans, and the ground-level stories of slaves who escaped across the border.
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