The strength of Paul Barba's work is in its expansive scope, spanning centuries, crossing imperial boundaries, and engaging a diverse scholarly literature. Barba covers the history of slavery in Texas over more than 300 years as Spanish, indigenous, Mexican, Texan, and US Anglo-American groups participated in this trade or sought to control it. Barba constructs a rich and well-researched historical narrative that underscores the social and racial complexities of slavery in the Texas borderlands.
The book is rooted in the literature and academic framework of Borderlands Studies and history. Barba cites classics of the field from David Weber and Cynthia Radding, alongside important more recent research by Pekka Hämäläinen, Juliana Barr, and Ned Blackhawk, among others, which helps to situate his own work within the scholarly discussion about the region. Barba excels at bringing to the forefront the role of slavery and the slave trade in the changing political milieu as empires gave way to new nation-states and capitalism gradually replaced colonial mercantilism.
The throughline in Barba's work is that slavery, as a practice and an opportunity, animated the political and economic relationships of the diverse groups of people who lived in and sought to dominate the Texas region. These interactions came in different forms: raiding parties, punitive campaigns, and other forms of violence that used enslaved people not just for their labor, but also as diplomatic bargaining chips. Barba shows that slavery was practiced not only by European settlers and US Anglo Americans, but also by dominant indigenous groups, including Comanche and Apache communities.
Throughout the book, Barba does an excellent job of dismantling any sense of indigenous people as a cultural or social monolith. He goes to great lengths to list the many different indigenous identity groups present in the region and emphasizes the complex political and social relationships that existed among them. Tensions and violence across indigenous communities were exploited by Spanish and Mexican authorities and US American settlers, even as they shaped their own political connections. Barba argues that it was the growing differences over the question of slavery that led to the rupture in Mexican and Texan plans to colonize the region. Mexico's hope for economic development on the northern frontier was overtaken by the drive for western expansion of anti-black slavery agriculture among US Anglo- American settlers.
Another strength of this book is its use of sources. Barba draws on diverse English- and Spanish-language documents, including primary sources from Mexico's national general archive. His research gives the narrative a rich cross-border feel as he delves into the activities and correspondence of Spanish, Mexican, and US authorities in the region. He also draws on indigenous scholarship to deepen the book's cultural understanding of how slavery shaped social and economic relationships.
However, the attention to cultural details and the care Barba made to nuance group identities highlight a curious choice he made. When describing both Spanish and Mexican actors, even during the colonial period, he frequently uses ‘Hispanic,’ a term the US government has used to identify people of Spanish or Latin American ancestry living in the country. For example, in the introduction he writes, “Taken as a whole, with an appreciation of the experiences of Hispanic, Lipan Apache, Comanche, Tonkawa, Mexican, Kiowa, Anglo-American and Black people (as well as others) Texas history was rather unique” (2). Also from the introduction: “Hispanic, Comanche, Anglo-American, and African-descended people were all implicated in Texas Borderlands slavery to varying degrees” (9). He also discusses “Hispanic colonialism” and “Hispanic-Native relations” frequently throughout the text, which muddies the distinctions between Spanish and Mexican authorities and their political motivations. To this reviewer, the term reads as an anachronistic use of a loaded modern identity category.
Moreover, it raises concerns about the use of “Texas borderlands” as a concept, since none of the historical actors at the time used that term as a geographic identifier. Given the long historical focus Barba has developed, and his willingness to bring nuance to cultural identity elsewhere in his book, it would have been appreciated to see him go further than relying on established but nonetheless limiting terminology to describe the Texas region and the people who have lived in it.
Barba's book is an important contribution to Borderlands history. Because he centers the practice of slavery in a narrative that spans multiple centuries, readers can appreciate how this activity so profoundly shaped political, social, and economic relationships in the Texas region from the colonial era to the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The book will appeal to a broad set of historians and specialists interested in colonial Spanish and Mexican history, indigenous history, US westward expansion, state formation, and anti-black slavery. How it engages the existing literature on Borderlands history also makes it an ideal work for graduate seminars.
