Spanish Texas, 1519-1821: Revised Edition

By Donald E. Chipman

Book Overview

Winner, Kate Broocks Bates Award, Texas State Historical Association
Presidio La Bah a Award, Sons of the Republic of Texas
A Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Book

Modern Texas, like Mexico, traces its beginning to sixteenth-century encounters between Europeans and Indians who contested control over a vast land. Unlike Mexico, however, Texas eventually received the stamp of Anglo-American culture, so that Spanish contributions to present-day Texas tend to be obscured or even unknown. The first edition of Spanish Texas, 1519-1821 (1992) sought to emphasize the significance of the Spanish period in Texas history. Beginning with information on the land and its inhabitants before the arrival of Europeans, the original volume covered major people and events from early exploration to the end of the colonial era.

This new edition of Spanish Texas has been extensively revised and expanded to include a wealth of discoveries about Texas history since 1990. The opening chapter on Texas Indians reveals their high degree of independence from European influence and extended control over their own lives. Other chapters incorporate new information on La Salle's Garcitas Creek colony and French influences in Texas, the destruction of the San Sab mission and the Spanish punitive expedition to the Red River in the late 1750s, and eighteenth-century Bourbon reforms in the Americas. Drawing on their own and others' research, the authors also provide more inclusive coverage of the role of women of various ethnicities in Spanish Texas and of the legal rights of women on the Texas frontier, demonstrating that whether European or Indian, elite or commoner, slave owner or slave, women enjoyed legal protections not heretofore fully appreciated.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0292721803
• ISBN13: 9780292721807
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Length: 388 Pages
• Weight: 1.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Still The Best Overall Synopsis

Professor (Emeritus) Chipman has written an excellent book that is highly informative, impressively researched, thoughtfully organized, and well written. Although its approach is in some ways dated, particularly the parts in the last chapter about the effects of Spanish Missions on Indigenous Texans (and in its dated bias about the Spanish, Indigenous AND AFRICAN roots of Tejanos), the strengths of this book far outweigh the shortcomings. Although this book could not have been written without the pioneering work of people such as Carlos Castaneda, this is the best "single" source available on this subject and will probably not be surpassed for many years to come.

A thorough and valuable reference about Early Texas History

Drawing on vast resources contained in the United States and Spain, this work covers the rich and long early history of the region now known as Texas. Spain controlled this land for over three centuries, before losing it to Americans who moved in to start a new life in the West. Spanish conquistadors, as well as their successes and defeats, make for a fascinating read all by themselves. The book documents their struggles with the French to the east (Louisiana), and how even the early empires feared the newly independent colonies of Great Britain, the United States. The research that went into this book was complete...and it shows. Those interested in the early history of the New World and of Texas are not likely to find a better resource anywhere.