(1) 2015 Manzano-Munguía. Forced Transnationalism PDF.PDF (original) (raw)

Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands

The Journal of American History, 2020

Osterhammel takes pains to nuance the oversimplified vision adopted by a good number of scholars and critics in the wake of Edward Said's massively influential Orientalism, published in 1978. While Clarke's complaint was that Said's book dealt little if at all with the "far" East (East Asia), Osterhammel's thesis rests less on geography than on the significant chronological distinction between the 18 th and 19 th centuries. In short, many European "orientalists" of the 18 th century, nurtured by the empiricism, humanism, "polycentric" cosmopolitanism, and (a better sort of) universalism of the European Enlightenment, took a balanced and, at times, a surprisingly positive view of Asia. This was a more positive conceptualization in its constituent parts and as a wholethough part of the argument is that the better critics avoided the temptation to offer generalizations about Asia or "the orient" (393-394). According to Osterhammel, this would change by the early 19 th century, when, for a number of complex reasons, the discourse about Asia became much more negative and simplified, colored by new ideas of racial hierarchy as well as a growing sense of the West's "manifest destiny" to subdue (and simultaneously "liberate") the world. And, he argues, we in the early twenty-first century still tend to read the entire history of East-West relations through 19 th-and 20 th-century Western "cultural imperialism" (and correspondent Asian cultural nationalisms). Osterhammel spends a fair number of pages discussing the concept of the "high" traveler, who, while appealing to "elevated outlooks and firmer principles", may in fact be the prototype for the 19 th-century colonist; i.e., one who aims to conquer new realms for science, religion, and civilization. And yet, Osterhammel wants to hold on to at least a few of these "high" travelers, such as Anquetil-Duperron (1731-1805), Carsten Niebuhr (1733-1815), the Comte de Volney (1757-1820)-as well as to "armchair theorists" such as Montesquieu (1689-1755), who is here praised as the "the creator of a general framework of a general social science" (386). These individuals, in his estimation, came closest to attaining the Enlightenment ideal of the "philosophical" observer (185-86). This is, then, a story of decline and, perhaps, also one of missed opportunities. And here the critic might raise some hackles, for Osterhammel verges on overstating his case, as important as it may be. In addition, by virtue of its detail, this book comes close to the "pointless prolixity that irritates the reader through a profusion of minutiae" lamented by one connoisseur of overseas travel literature (216). Having said that, the chapter on "Encounters" is, to this reader, the most poignant of the book, as when Osterhammel waxes lyrical on the "transcultural regularity of play" that helped in some cases to loosen the "entanglements of objective of casting "a light on the last decades of the Spanish Empire in North America and on the role of Spain in the American Revolutionary War by bringing to life the world of Bernardo de Gálvez" (8), there is hardly a central thesis in the study. The reader is thus responsible for interpreting the significance not only of many of Gálvez's actions but also, in the end, of his extraordinary life. An exploration of the 200 pages of endnotes explains this problem of exposition and methodology. The author draws most of his evidence from an impressive, painstaking review of practically all that has been written and published about Gálvez since the eighteenth century. Other authors' works drive the narrative of certain sections of the book, partially eclipsing Quintero Saravia's own voice and his equally impressive and valuable original research. Among the study's most interesting findings is that, early in his life, Gálvez became a sort of expert in North American Indian affairs, one who contributed to changes in imperial policies and regulations. On the whole, the specialist reader will find that this book has a lot to tell us about the Spanish Enlightenment, colonial administrative reform (the so-called Bourbon Reforms), imperial borderlands, and military history.

Problems and Prospects in North American Borderlands History

History Compass, 2006

Scholars of North American borders have raised fundamental questions about the relationship between the discipline of history and the nation-state. Integrating the histories of the U.S.-Canadian and U.S.-Mexican borders while paying more attention to the limits of national power will allow them to write accounts of modern state-making that address questions important to all historians of the modern world. Borders have recently become the sites of deep scholarly interest. Contemporary border regions, particularly the U.S.-Mexico border, are burgeoning economically and demographically, and the movements of goods and people through them are important subjects of political debate and agitation. These developments raise an implicit challenge to the work of historians: although the modern nation-state gave birth to the discipline and continues to structure its specializations and lines of inquiry, the increasing prominence of border crossings of all sorts suggests that nations themselves are shaped by larger dynamics that may be discounted or underestimated by versions of the past tied too firmly to nation-based inquiry. Indeed, the physical edges of nations may reveal the most about the contingency of national histories and provide opportunities for creating accounts of the past that transcend both the geographic and conceptual limits imposed by international boundaries. 1 "Borderlands," a term that a generation ago referred to the study of New Spain's northern frontier, is now shorthand for the study of the U.S.-Mexico border region. The creation of this border from the long history of European colonialism and subsequent national projects, and its shifting meanings and implications, are the central subjects of much of this literature. Recent projects, building on a generation of more regionally oriented histories and engaging the historiographies and archives of both Mexico and the United States, have fleshed out some of the impacts of border-making in both nations. We now know that the new international boundary altered class relations in much of the Mexican north. Regional economic elites and the central state took advantage of the fact that there was no longer a need to assure subaltern men of their land rights in order to rely on them as a military

Negotiating Conquest: Internal Colonialism and Shared Histories in the South Texas Borderlands

The Western Historical Quarterly, 2015

This essay conceptualizes the post-1848 South Texas borderlands through the internal colonial model. South Texas Mexicans, rather than being the passive victims of domination by a colonial power, actively negotiated their places within the South Texas internal colony, similar to colonized peoples in formal colonial settings throughout world history. recent developments in borderlands history scholarship have contributed to new understandings of the North american Southwest, as historians examine the shared histories of people who live at the edges of social groups, empires, and nation-states. 1 these approaches are not without their critics. For example, Canadian scholar Bryce traister argues that postnationalist intellectual This content downloaded from 24.155.117.154 on Sun, 02 May 2021 03:09:55 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 48 antonio Orendain, interview by Charles Carr Winn, 20 July 1971, transcript, Special Collections, university of texas at arlington. 49 For more on theories related to the intersection of capitalism and colonialism, see,

Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History

Hispanic American Historical Review, 2006

This collection of essays showcases the work of young, U.S.-based scholars working on U.S.-Mexico borderlands history during what the editors refer to as the region's "formative" period, the 1820s through the 1940s. Samuel Truett and Elliott Young begin with an introduction situating the collection within existing literature. Rather than redefine the field, the editors insist that there is more to gain by seeing borderlands history as a "meeting place" for multiple fields, where Chicana/o, U.S. West, Spanish borderlands, and Mexican specialists can converse together "on their own terms" (p. 12). The essays reflect the fruits of such conversations. Many of the contributors add welcome complexity to familiar borderland subjects. In the opening essay, Raúl Ramos explores a range of attitudes held by Spanish and Mexican officials in San Antonio, Texas, regarding their powerful Indian neighbors. Locating interesting continuities in outlook and policy before and after Mexican independence, Ramos nonetheless has little to say about Indians themselves-a curious omission given the volume's emphasis on multiple perspectives and boundary crossing. Andrés Reséndez's excellent essay on borderlands literary cultures in the mid-nineteenth century begins with a failed attempt by Texans to extend their dominion over eastern New Mexico in 1841. Reséndez taps into fascinating differences in the ways borderlands peoples articulated corporate identity by placing sensationalized U.S. accounts of the Texan endeavor alongside the published accounts of Mexicans and pictographic calendars of Kiowa Indians. Louise Pubols presents a subtle portrait of political culture in post-1848 California. Writing against the more familiar story of elite Californios naively colluding with American newcomers and quickly losing their wealth and power, the author focuses instead on the prominent de la Guerra family of southern California and the endurance of their patriarchal political network into the 1870s. Benjamin Johnson's essay serves as a tight précis of his important 2003 book, Revolution in Texas (Yale Univ. Press). When in 1915 ethnic Mexicans began attacking ranches and killing Anglos along the lower Rio Grande, Texas Rangers and vigilantes responded with often-indiscriminate reprisals. Johnson argues that in the disastrous aftermath of the rebellion, Tejanos came to embrace their American citizenship and fight politically for the ideal of "multiracial democracy" (p. 293). Alexandra Minna Stern explores the creation of the U.S. Border Patrol. Stern tells a tale of a hardening border, racist medical quarantines, and punitive immigration laws, all policed by a newly constituted Border Patrol service armed with extraordinary powers and inflated notions of masculinity. Other contributions enlist little-known actors to guide the reader through a complex and rich landscape of borderland dreams, schemes, and social relations. Bárbara O. Reyes explores the story of Bárbara Gandiaga, a native woman convicted in 1806 of conspiring to kill a friar at a mission in Baja California. By putting the official, Domini