War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830-1880 - (New Directions in Tejano History) by Miguel Angel Gonzalez-Quiroga (Hardcover)

About the Book

War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830-1880 is a history of the coexistence and cooperation among Mexicans, Anglo-Americans, and the Native Americans, African Americans, and Europeans who inhabited the borderlands. These parallel worlds gave rise not only to violent conflict but also cooperation and economic and social advancement.

Book Synopsis

The historical record of the Rio Grande valley through much of the nineteenth century reveals well-documented violence fueled by racial hatred, national rivalries, lack of governmental authority, competition for resources, and an international border that offered refuge to lawless men. Less noted is the region's other everyday reality, one based on coexistence and cooperation among Mexicans, Anglo-Americans, and the Native Americans, African Americans, and Europeans who also inhabited the borderlands. War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830-1880 is a history of these parallel worlds focusing on a border that gave rise not only to violent conflict but also cooperation and economic and social advancement.

Meeting here are the Anglo-Americans who came to the border region to trade, spread Christianity, and settle; Mexicans seeking opportunity in el norte; Native Americans who raided American and Mexican settlements alike for plunder and captives; and Europeans who crisscrossed the borderlands seeking new futures in a fluid frontier space. Historian Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga draws on national archives, letters, consular records, periodicals, and a host of other sources to give voice to borderlanders' perspectives as he weaves their many, varied stories into one sweeping narrative. The tale he tells is one of economic connections and territorial disputes, of refugees and bounty hunters, speculation and stakeholding, smuggling and theft and other activities in which economic considerations often carried more weight than racial prejudice.

Spanning the Anglo settlement of Texas in the 1830s, the Texas Revolution, the Republic of Texas, the US-Mexican War, various Indian wars, the US Civil War, the French intervention into Mexico, and the final subjugation of borderlands Indians by the combined forces of the US and Mexican armies, this is a magisterial work that forever alters, complicates, and enriches borderlands history.

Review Quotes

"War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier provides a history as epic as its title. González-Quiroga's research in national and regional archives across Mexico and the United States is a model of thorough transnational research."--Journal of Arizona History

"This timely monograph is an excellent example of what U.S.-Mexican borderlands scholarship should look like...Meticulously researched and beautifully written, War and Peace forces us to reflect on moments of collaboration between cultures long pitted against one another. History offers us useful lessons, and there is no shortage of them in this book. One hopes, however, that policy makers learn from such lessons, particularly given the country's continuing problems with racist policing practices and an often ill-informed portrayal of a border region with little to offer."--- Southwestern Historical Quarterly


"Narrative in construction and painstakingly researched, ..."-- Journal of America's Military Past

"War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier depicts in exquisite detail the countervailing forces that shaped life along the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in the nineteenth century: great economic opportunity along with potential for deadly violence. González-Quiroga has mined the literature and documentary sources available to give us a detailed, humane, and perplexing yet realistic portrait of frontier society."--Andrés Reséndez, author of The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America


"War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830-1880 offers a compelling new interpretation of a pivotal period of borderlands history. Miguel González-Quiroga argues effectively that the often-troubled relations between the United States and Mexico contained much more than aggression and hostility. There was extensive peaceful and far-reaching cross-border cooperation as well. Anyone hoping to understand the Texas-Mexico border today will want this book."--Jerry Thompson, author of Tejano Tiger: José de los Santos Benavides and the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1823-1891