Californios, Anglos, and the Performance of Oligarchy in the U.S. West by Andrew Gibb

Abstract

Reviewed by: Californios, Anglos, and the Performance of Oligarchy in the U.S. West by Andrew Gibb Dennis Sloan Californios, Anglos, and the Performance of Oligarchy in the U.S. West. By Andrew Gibb. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2018. pp. xi + 248. $45.00 paper. At its heart, Andrew Gibb's Californios, Anglos, and the Performance of Oligarchy in the US West is a history book. Gibb's primary achievement in this monograph lies in a convincing argument that the early US West (more specifically, California) is less a product of Anglo individualism than an Anglo continuation of the oligarchic structures and practices that defined the area under Mexican rule. Although Gibb's use of a performance studies framework meets with varying [End Page 200] levels of success, he offers glimpses of untold histories that prove valuable for both performance and history scholars alike. Gibb structures his book using a metaphor of theatrical performance; he titles his introduction, for example, "Dramaturgical Notes." Here, Gibb places himself in opposition to some New Western historians by identifying processes of accommodation and acculturation, rather than conflict and displacement, as driving forces in the development of the US West. In the chapters that follow, Gibb contends that californios (Mexican Californians) and Anglo Americans adopted and adapted Mexican patterns of land ownership to create and maintain systems of social hierarchy and power that did not disappear under US control but merely changed hands. As a performance studies scholar, Gibb focuses his analysis on public events staged by californio oligarchs between the mid-1830s and 1850, at which time California became the thirtieth US state. Relying on J. L. Austin's theory of speech acts and the performative utterance, Gibb theorizes that "the entirety of a performance might be considered as a performative utterance in and of itself" if the witnessing of such a performance effects "a change in real-world conditions" (15). On this premise, Gibb posits that power and governance of both the Mexican and the US West relied on repeated public performances—both theatrical and nontheatrical—enacted by landowning oligarchs to simultaneously defend their wealth and appease their dependents. Following a section titled "Curtain Raiser," which recounts the history of Santa Barbara's still-extant Fiesta and its annual restaging of the wedding that united the landowning de la Guerra family with New England merchant Alfred Robinson, chapter 1, "The Angels," explores oligarchic structures established in Mexican California. Gibb looks to public-facing events like baptisms, social dances, and weddings to demonstrate how the landowning gentry of Mexican California performed their positions of leadership for their community dependents through both ceremony and generosity. He analyzes the ways in which various californio oligarchs organized time and space not only to reflect but in fact to concretize their social and political relationships with their respective communities. He then examines unions like that between de la Guerra and Robinson, arguing that such alliances performatively assimilated Anglos into californio social structures as a way to preserve them. Chapter 2, "Collaborations," chronicles a series of performances both onand offstage during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). Gibb looks first to two Fourth of July celebrations, then to performative military events including the US invasion and seizure of Monterey, and finally to a variety of theatrical productions staged jointly by californios and US military groups. Gibb highlights [End Page 201] these events as collaborations between californio and Anglo elites that ensured the maintenance of oligarchic structures that could ultimately be used by both groups. Chapter 3, "A Question of Casting," explores the Anglo staging of the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt alongside differing californio and Anglo understandings of the construction and performance of race. In this chapter, Gibb departs not only from the generally chronological structure of the rest of the book but also from his examination of successful performatives; he presents this chapter as an opportunity to explore failed performatives. Here, he describes a contentious set of military performances between californio general José Castro and Anglo John Charles Frémont, which led to William Ide's failed 1846 Anglo attempt to establish California as its own republic. The second half of the chapter focuses on William Leidesdorff, a...