ARMED FRONTIER: Warfare and Military Culture in the Texas-Northeastern Mexico

1-251980

Deeply researched history of border skirmishes from mid-colonial times to the first Texas secession. Explores the topic through an examination of the inhabitants of four settlements: San Antonio and Laredo in Texas, as well as Lampazos and Bustamante in northeastern Mexico. All four of those settlements had Hispanic, Mesoamerican, and Native American elements that intermingled, adapted, and evolved over several centuries, creating a distinctive society in which armed service and military culture played a central role in social organization. Places the local and micro historical aspects of borderlands military culture into the broader context of the Spanish Empire, Mexican nationalism, and the Atlantic World. Focuses on how military organization and methods of warfare in these regions were influenced by the heritage of medieval Iberian martial traditions. Provides an analysis of borderland societies through several historical periods including the Reconquista, the conquest of Mexico, the colonial period, the wars of independence, the Mexican Republic, and the age of federalism and centralism, all against the backdrop of a burgeoning geopolitical rivalry with the United States.