The Shifting Borderlands

Abstract

THE DECISIVE TREATY OF PARIS Of 1763 changed the rivalry for North America from a three-cornered struggle to a two-way contest. Before 1763 Spanish claims to the region north and east of New Mexico, based on papal decree, discovery, exploration, trade, and treaties with the Indians, conflicted with similar but opposing claims by the French. However, the treaty of 1763 eliminated France from continental North America, and the Spanish frontier moved in one jump eastward from Los Adaes, which had guarded the Louisiana-Texas border for half a century (that was of course the Franco-Spanish border), to the Mississippi River, where the Spaniards then encountered the British, who were pushing their own frontier westward to the same river. A small annoyance on the Red River was swapped by Spain for a mortal danger on the Mississippi River. The cession of 1763, as Bolton says, hurled Spain from the frying pan into the fire. From 1763 to 1803 the whole country from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean was Spanish in fact, and, except for the British on the north, there was no boundary question other than the provincial boundaries of Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and California. However, the occupation of Louisiana and the almost simultaneous colonization of Alta California by Spain (to counter Russian activities in the northern Pacific) created a new situation in western North America. The Franco-Spanish rivalry had ended, but the growing colonial power of the British Empire was a menace to Spanish possessions on both the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast. Therefore, after her defeat in the Seven Years' War, Spain reorganized her empire. The reorganization involved the whole empire in the Americas, including the Mississippi Valley, the Floridas (lost temporarily), and the Caribbean Sea. The purpose was to defend Spanish possessions against British encroachments and strengthen