Contested Empire: Rethinking the Texas Revolution ed. by Sam W. Haynes and Gerald D. Saxon (review)

In his introduction to Contested Empire: Rethinking the Texas Revolution, Gregg Cantrell claims that provincialism has so plagued the study of the rebellion of 1835–1836 that serious scholars must tread carefully into the subject. The eminent Texas historian further praises trailblazing revisionists and calls for new perspectives in the study of the Texas War of Independence. Answering this appeal are five respected scholars who took part in the University of Texas at Arlington’s forty-eighth annual Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lecture Series. Distinguished in fields “broader than the borders of the Lone Star State,” the authors bring their unique viewpoints and expertise to analyze and understand the erstwhile republic’s inciting moment (p. 4). This volume, built upon these lectures, offers new insights into the contentious subject.

In “Voluntary Mexicans: Allegiance and the Origins of the Texas Revolution,” Eric R. Schlereth, a scholar of the American Revolutionary era from the University of Texas at Dallas, explores eighteenth-century notions of “perpetual allegiance” versus “voluntary allegiance” (p. 12). According to Schlereth, the Founders challenged the belief that citizens were bound to national loyalty by birth. Instead, they embraced a more fluid idea of fidelity. Many of the thousands of Anglo-Americans who immigrated to Mexican Texas internalized this concept, allowing them to adopt a new homeland and allegiance. As they grew dissatisfied with Mexican rule, however, they recast themselves as citizens of yet another nation—the Texas Republic.

Sam W. Haynes from the University of Texas at Arlington’s Center for Greater Southwestern Studies also situates the Texas Revolution in an early American context. “‘Imitating the Example of Our Forefathers’: The Texas Revolution as Historical Reenactment” examines the collective memory of the American War of Independence and how it “shaped the behaviors of Anglo-Americans living west of the Sabine River” (p. 45). Texians, as diverse as empresarioStephen F. Austin and filibuster Haden Edwards, evoked the American Revolution’s pliant memory to inspire a variety of actions from the armed defense of Mexico to outright rebellion against it.

Miguel Soto of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México places the Texas Revolution within the context of Mexico’s independence from Spain in his chapter, “Politics and Profits: Mexican Officials and Land Speculation in Texas, 1824–1835.” Soto demonstrates how Mexico’s land policy during its early formative years put the nation on a dangerous path toward territorial dismemberment. According to Soto, “the drive for profit from Texas lands ran high on both sides of the border” (p. 90). Mexican entrepreneurs, taking advantage of generous land grants, sold extensive property to Yankee speculators. Essentially, Mexico risked losing control of Texas well before Antonio López de Santa Anna suspended the 1824 constitution and sparked warfare with its citizens.

University of St Andrews professor Will Fowler continues with a post-independence Mexican perspective in his chapter, “The Texan Revolution of 1835–1836 and Early Mexican Nationalism.” Fowler challenges the popular belief that the Mexican identity was forged in the ashes of the U.S.-Mexican War and instead places it a decade earlier at the conclusion of the Texas War of Independence. Mexican intelligentsia sought to create an enlightened identity that contrasted with the perceived Anglo-American obsession with land acquisition and slavery in Texas. The Texas Revolution therefore contributed “to an awakening of an early form of Mexican nationalism at a time when the Mexican nation-state was still very much in the making” (pp. 98–99).

The collection culminates with a chapter by Pennsylvania State University professor Amy S. Greenberg. “‘Time’s Noblest Empire Is the Last’: Texas Annexation in the Presumed Course of American Empire” examines the impact of artist Thomas Cole’s Course of Empireon American attitudes toward Texas. Cole’s epic series of five paintings graphically demonstrated the rise and...