Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800 – 1850

Abstract

The story of how Mexico lost half its territory to the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century has been told numerous times. Andrés Reséndez’s contribution aims to advance our understanding by adding the question of national identity formation to the analysis. The author succeeds in this goal, and his focus on identity leads to new interpretations about how the Mexican north became the U.S. Southwest.The author maintains that “identity choices almost always follow a situational logic” (p. 3). He makes identity a fluid proposition, especially on a border located at the frontier of two nation-states in formation, where people routinely made choices that accumulated over time to become part of the “frontier psyche” (p. 3). Reséndez argues that “two tsunami-like structural forces swept through this frontier area during the first half of the nineteenth century: state and market” (p. 3). These forces provided the larger context, defined the range of options available to people, and influenced the identity-forming decisions they made. Reséndez maintains that the forces of state formation pulsating from the Mexican center collided with the raw market forces of the United States. The collision presented people with the questions, issues, options, and conflicting visions of the future that led to the departure of New Mexico and Texas from Mexico. The argument is persuasive.Reséndez considers the established historical literature simplistic in its understanding of the process by which Texas and New Mexico became part of the United States. Historians take a shortcut on this issue instead of embracing its complexity. He states, “Traditional histories of the U.S. – Mexico borderlands have tended to assume that the frontier residents had clear national loyalties since inception” (p. 264). Reséndez strongly critiques historians’ uncritical acceptance of manifest destiny as the explanation for the complicated process of national identity formation. His work also fits within the growing literature on early nineteenth-century Mexico, which emphasizes the tensions between a centralizing nation-state and its rebellious provinces and calls for a deeper appreciation of the role local dynamics played in the larger narrative of national identity formation. Bringing the border provinces of Texas and New Mexico into this historical fold is an important contribution to Mexican historiography.This book is exceptionally well researched. Reséndez makes use of local, regional, and national archives from both the United States and Mexico, as well as newspaper sources and a wide range of contemporaneous published accounts. Although this is not a flaw in the book, it must be said that his research does not offer up new archival finds that might overturn our understanding of the nineteenth-century border. The text is driven by documented evidence, and at times the meticulous archival documents carry the narrative for many pages. The book is well written, clearly organized, and straightforward. Reséndez provides ample description and insight about many of the protagonists, skillfully weaving narrative and interpretation. While the author engages some substantive theoretical issues pertaining to identity and the nation, he does not allow his theoretical explorations to muddy the story he tells and the argument he seeks to advance. On the other hand, some readers may have hoped for more explicit use of theoretical concepts.Perhaps the book’s most interesting contribution is its subtle use of the comparative method. In telling the story of Texas and New Mexico, Reséndez is not content with a simple parallel presentation of the two cases. Instead, he identifies the constant of how people’s identity is constructed from the positional context and then shows how Texas and New Mexico followed two distinct paths toward becoming part of the United States, focusing on his two key variables, the state and the market. The comparative method rests at the heart of this thesis. This use of comparison highlights the need for more sophisticated and explicit comparison of regional and local processes during the process of nation-state formation in Mexico’s nineteenth century.This book will appeal to a variety of specialists. Border-studies scholars will appreciate its comparative framing and the historical backdrop it provides for contemporary border issues. Reséndez foregrounds the implications of his study for the present day in an all-too-short conclusion. The book is also a solid contribution to the scholarship on the complicated early history of nineteenth-century Mexico. Reséndez makes an effort at casting his work to a wider audience with frequent references to other border and frontier contexts. The effort makes it appealing to a more generalized audience of historians.