Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga explores two aspects of nineteenth-century Texas-Mexico borderlands often missing from stories about a region well known for its history of violence: solidarity and friendship (304). His book definitively argues that a “dichotomy of hate and harmony” permeated daily lived experiences along the Texas-Mexico border (306). He unequivocally concludes, “This was a reality based on coexistence and cooperation among Mexicans, Anglo-Americans, and other ethnic groups that inhabited the region, including Native Americans, African Americans, and Europeans” (1).
González-Quiroga's narrative history weaves together biographies and events from the 1820s through the 1880s to support his main goal of “emphasizing cooperation without ignoring the violence” (3). An introduction, nine chronological body chapters, and an afterword drive his conversations about the border and his tales about the people who sought social and economic advancement in the border's binational region. His stories of Texan and northern Mexican interconnectedness feature historical people as diverse as Henry L. Kinney, frontier merchant, in Chapter 2, “Conflict and Cooperation”; Melinda Rankin, a Protestant missionary, in Chapter 4, “Commercial and Religious Expansion”; Grimus Thorkelin de Løvenskiold, a Danish American Lawyer based in Texas, in Chapter 6, “Cooperation in Times of War”; and Elizia and Emiliana Flores, Mexican Quaker supporters, in Chapter 8, “Between Hate and Harmony.” The commendable range of human experiences included in this book strengthens González-Quiroga's claim that cooperation, often within the context of violence originating externally to the region, defined the experiences of many nineteenth-century people who lived in the Texas-north Mexican borderlands (358).
González-Quiroga situates multiple insights within his sweeping narrative of nineteenth-century economic, political, and social cooperation. Too numerous to adequately describe here, his contributions to borderlands historiographies include discussions about vecino revolts in the 1850s and racial interdependence in the region during the US Civil War. Chapter 2, “The Permeable Border,” emphasizes economic and militant partnerships between Anglo-Americans such as Stephen F. Austin and natives of San Antonio such as José María de Jesús Carvajal, against Mexican national authorities. These alliances between Texans and Mexicans also drew in members of African American maroon and indigenous communities, who often joined the opposing federal Mexican forces under commanders such as General Antonio María Jáuregui. While Carvajal and his allies never achieved their eventual goal of forming an independent country, the Republic of the Sierra Madre, González-Quiroga's analysis of the movement reveals the predominance of transnational interests and serves as a window into the complexities of borderlands life (99).
Chapter 5, “The U.S. Civil War,” creates another window into those complexities. González-Quiroga argues that the US Civil War forced people in the Rio Grande borderlands to pragmatic cooperation with diverse populations (201). Their livelihoods, often rooted in cotton production and trade—as well as their lives—depended on a greater racial acceptance. González-Quiroga acknowledges that such acceptance certainly did not define all Anglo-American and Mexican interactions during the US Civil War, but his stories of solidarity challenge dominant narratives of racism and exclusion (204).
In addition to skillfully crafting his own scholarly contributions, González-Quiroga engages and expertly synthesizes existing historiography and identifies areas for future research. His ability to both articulate and evaluate dozens of years of scholarship within the span of a single sentence is nothing short of remarkable (89, 248, and 266, for examples). Similarly, he astutely identifies areas for future research, such as women who connected Anglos and Mexicans and American soldiers who fought with Mexican soldiers during the French intervention, during the course of his own analysis (301, 247). These references and scholarly suggestions further demonstrate the scope of González-Quiroga's own research.
Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga's work stands as a thoroughly researched, groundbreaking, and profound volume. Both seasoned scholars and readers new to histories of the nineteenth-century Western Hemisphere will greatly appreciate his efforts. Indeed, his book has set the standard for what it means to create a transnational history of the nineteenth-century Rio Grande borderlands.
