Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis

Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7521985
AutoresElisa Sampson Vera Tudela (0000-0001-6651-9647, King's College London, autor de correspondencia)
Año2006
Volumen93
Número3
Páginas855-856
Fecha de publicación2006-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoREVIEW
RevistaJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
EditorialOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/4486449
OpenAlexW2325648842
IdiomaEN

Steven W. Hackel has written a rich and rewarding contribution to the scholarship on missions of colonial California. His study focuses on the intersections of Indian and Spanish worlds and covers an extraordinary period between 1769 and 1850 when the establishment of missions was followed rapidly by Mexican independence and then U.S. rule. Using the mission San Carlos Borromeo as a case study, Hackel brings out the paradoxes of a system that was “anachronistic, self-defeating, and contradictory in its expectations” (p. 2). Throughout, he seeks to incorporate his subject into an understanding of American history and to establish connections with the historiography of colonial Spanish America and, where relevant, of early modern Europe. In the first part of the book, there is an overview of the Monterrey region and the dual revolutions of biological change and demographic collapse. The second part examines points of interaction between Indians and non-Indians. In the final part, Hackel brings the histories of some of the mission Indians into the present. Even from this cursory summary, the ambition and scope of the book are apparent, and Hackel satisfies all of the curiosity and most of the questions his study inspires. A review of this length cannot do justice to the massive scholarship underpinning this book or communicate the elegance and care with which the macro- and micro-narratives (and all their disciplinary and methodological demands) are woven together

Anachronism · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Colonialism · Curiosity · Discipline · Economic Justice · Historiography · Independence (probability theory · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · SAINT · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Subject (documents · History · Latin American history and culture · Law · Psychology