The U.S.-Mexican War: A Binational Reader (review)

Christopher Conway’s excellent primary documents reader provides scholars and teachers interested in telling a transnational story of American imperialism and westward expansion with an invaluable collection of sources to tell that story. Conway delves deeply into Mexican sources, not to provide “balance,” but rather to reorient our perspective and understanding of the events in the nineteenth century that continue to shape the region. He uses the documents to expand the context of the war by taking an expansive view of the period he draws from and the types of documents used.

Conway provides a concise overview of the events and politics leading up to the war, during the war, and its aftermath. This narrative and the subsequent documents follow along with the recent move established by historians to include the events in Texas as part of the war and American westward conquest. In this sense, historians of Texas will find numerous documents from both Anglophone and Hispanophone sources to provide a more useful context to their work. All the Spanish language documents are presented in English thanks to Gustavo Pellón’s excellent translations. The reader’s strength comes from choosing both Mexican and American documents that paint a complex narrative of the diplomatic and political impact of the war in Texas and Mexico.

The reader charts the ways the Texas issue appeared in political discourses in both Mexico City and Washington, D.C., Conway includes both Mexican internal debates around the legitimacy of Texas independence and Polk’s mention of the annexation of Texas as reunification in his inaugural address. In a subsequent section, both American and Mexican participants describe the war itself. For instance, he includes reports on the Battle of Palo Alto by Mexican General Mariano Arista and American General Zachary Taylor. Other documents detail very extensive political debates in the respective capitals, such as the All-Mexico advocates in Washington and or the so-called Polkos Revolt in Mexico City, an insurrection sprung from Santa Anna’s absence.

The last sections of the reader begin to trace the broad impact of the war and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Conway chose documents highlighting the increased violence experienced by Mexican people on the American side after the treaty. These sorts of documents can also be useful in the context of understanding the formation of Mexican American identity. A section on culture and literature adds yet another dimension to our views of the war period by including poetry, songs, and other fiction from both nations.

Overall, this is a handy resource for those teaching courses in American, Mexican, Texas, and Chicano/a history. As the book stresses the politics of the war, it is harder to come by the views and participation on both sides of the conflict by Mexican people living in the states that straddle the future border. Recent work on New Mexico by Laura Gómez on the war’s impact (Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race, 2008) and on indigenous communities by Brian DeLay (War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the Mexican American War, 2009) point to additional places documents could one day be added to get a deeper sense of the local social and ideological shifts from this watershed event in American history.