Missions and Frontiers of Spanish America: A Comparative Study of the Impact of Environmental, Economic, Political, and Socio-Cultural Variations on the Missions in the Rio de la Plata Region and on the Northern Frontier of New Spain (review)

Robert H. Jackson's most recent book joins a spate of comparative works dealing with Spain's frontier regions in the New World. Such studies as David J. Weber's Bárbaros (2005), focusing on the Bourbon policies toward frontier native people throughout Spain's American empire, and Robert C. Galgano's Feast of Souls (2005), comparing the mission fields of New Mexico and Florida in the sixteenth century, have placed frontier developments in broader perspective and, in so doing, have opened up the previously insular historical interpretation of the Southwest Borderlands. Similarly, in Jackson's tenth book, he strives to compare comprehensively the numerous Spanish missionary efforts in North America with the Jesuit-dominated mission field in the Rio de la Plata area of South America.

As the full title suggests, Jackson examines the missions and their development not just as an evangelical enterprise—indeed, he hardly touches on this subject—but as an endeavor shaped by environmental factors, local economic and political circumstances, and by the Amerindian cultural response to the missionaries. After briefly relating the establishment of the various mission fields, the remainder of the book is organized topically to compare the people involved (mainly Franciscans and Jesuits, settlers, and native people), the physical construction of mission facilities, and the response of Amerindians to the mission programs. Jackson also revisits a specialty of his scholarship, demography, before finally relating the demise of the missions. He is especially concerned with what factors determined whether the Spanish succeeded in their attempts to create Amerindian communities "inhabited by sedentary agriculturalists that would pay tribute to the Crown and provide labor services to Spanish entrepreneurs" (p. 393). Jackson concludes that the Jesuits in the Rio de la Plata achieved more because the environment was better suited for agriculture, and the Jesuits there were willing to dovetail their message with traditional Guarani social and political institutions. The Spanish enjoyed some successes on the northern frontier, such as in New Mexico, but the arid environment, conflicts with local settlers, and a Franciscan tendency not to accept Amerindian traditional culture meant that overall these missions came up short of the goal.

There is much to admire in this book. Jackson should be applauded for undertaking such an ambitious study. His micro-histories of some of the missions are enormously valuable to the comparative process, and these are especially strong in the chapter devoted to the Amerindian response to the missionary effort. The book includes numerous charts and graphs that bolster his assertions, but also offer important information that other scholars can utilize in their own work. In fact, a historian engaged with virtually any topic regarding the Spanish northern frontier would be advised to look at Jackson's data and his sources. Copious contemporary photographs of missions, or in most cases their ruins, provide a visual, environmental context to the study.

On the other hand, Jackson's book has three noteworthy problems. The most obvious shortcoming involves the environmental aspect of the work, which is generally superficial—some areas were more arid than others. Rarely does topography, soil content, native vegetation, or other important factors enter into his consideration. Secondly, Jackson devotes little attention to the New Mexico mission field, the largest and longest-running missionary operation in the Southwest Borderlands. Minimizing this area reduces the overall value of Jackson's study. And finally, the author's study is overwhelmingly skewed to his area of expertise—the Jesuits in Baja California and Sonora, and the Franciscans in Alta California. For example in one of the longest chapters looking at...