Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo - (Before Gold: California Under Spain and Mexico) by Rose Marie Beebe & Robert M Senkewicz (Hardcover)

About the Book

A long-overdue in-depth look at one of the preeminent Mexican Americans in nineteenth-century California, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo also provides an unprecedented view of the Mexican American experience during that transformative era.

Book Synopsis

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807-90) grew up in Spanish California, became a leading military and political figure in Mexican California, and participated in some of the founding events of U.S. California. In 1874-75, Vallejo, working with historian and publisher Hubert Howe Bancroft, composed a five-volume history of Alta California--a monumental work that would be the most complete eyewitness account of California before the gold rush. But Bancroft shelved the work, and it has lain in the archives until its recent publication as Recuerdos: Historical and Personal Remembrances Relating to Alta California, 1769-1849, translated and edited by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz.

In Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo: Life in Spanish, Mexican, and American California, Beebe and Senkewicz not only illuminate Vallejo's life and history but also examine the broader experience of the nineteenth-century Californio community. In eight essays, the authors consider Spanish and Mexican rule in California, mission secularization, the rise of rancho culture, and the conflicts between settlers and Indigenous Californians, especially in the post-mission era. Vallejo was uniquely positioned to provide insight into early California's foundation, and as a defender of culture and education among Mexican Californians, he also offered a rare perspective on the cultural life of the Mexican American community. In their final chapter, Beebe and Senkewicz include a significant portion of the correspondence between Vallejo and his wife, Francisca Benicia, for what it reveals about the effects of the American conquest on family and gender roles.

A long-overdue in-depth look at one of the preeminent Mexican Americans in nineteenth-century California, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo also provides an unprecedented view of the Mexican American experience during that transformative era.

Review Quotes

"This essay collection is suitable and timely contribution to broadening our understanding of California history outside of an Anglo and U.S. viewpoint rooted in the Gold Rush or Southern California's boosterism."-- Western Historical Quarterly


"Despite their modest claims to be simply annotating Vallejo's writings, Beebe and Senkewicz have produced with Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo: Life in Spanish, Mexican, and American California one of the fullest and most critically complex accounts of a prominent californio to date."-- Southern California Quarterly


"Part of the richness of these essays derives from the new information that Beebe and Senkewicz have discovered from their thoroughgoing research in diverse archival sources. They have not written a hagiography; they are meticulously careful to present multiple sides of difficult issues. Such a balanced approach will allow readers to consider the larger story of the American conquest."--James Sandos, author of Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions


"Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz illustrate how Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo helped form early California and how his story reflects major concerns in the study of nineteenth-century California and the American West. Rather than composing a traditional biography, Beebe and Senkewicz present eight essays that bring together sources to explore California's Spanish, Mexican, and American periods. An important project, this work compiles sources from across the three periods, developing California's history beyond the American nation-state. This work's ecumenical approach is enhanced by primary sources as well as eight significant essays that connect Mariano Vallejo and California history to the broader world. This book is also one that California and Latinx history specialists and generalists will appreciate. It provides much needed context to the Spanish, Mexican, and early American California primary sources that are housed across California and is a wonderful entry point for students to connect with those sources."-- California History