To the Vast and Beautiful Land: Anglo Migration into Spanish Louisiana and Texas, 1760s–1820s by Light Townsend Cummins (review)

Light Townsend Cummins wrote the eleven previously published essays included in To the Vast and Beautiful Land: Anglo Migration into Spanish Louisiana and Texas, 1760s–1820s over the course of a long and distinguished career that helped redefine how historians have interpreted colonial and early national Texas and Louisiana history. In addition to this book, Cummins has written or contributed to some twenty books and given countless lectures on this subject matter. Perhaps owing to his prolific record, there is nothing groundbreaking about the thesis of this volume, "that commerce and land acquisition by Anglo-Americans went hand in hand as dual motivators for the migration of English speakers into Louisiana and Texas" (vii). Indeed, few modern historians would argue against this premise, but, falling in line with current trends in historiography, they may find that these articles do not properly explain how this "commerce" extended beyond North America and was a part of a greater Trans-Atlantic trading network. They may also find fault in the lack of discussion of how much of this "land acquisition" was by slave owners and would-be slave owners who wanted land in Louisiana and Texas for slave-driven plantation agriculture.

What makes this book refreshing and sets it apart from similar collections, however, is that Cummins recognizes that historiography has changed and that new revelations have arisen since he originally wrote many of the articles. He addresses this evolution in the book's introduction, in prefaces to each article, and, most impressively, in a detailed bibliographic essay, explaining where research stood when he wrote each article and providing more recent works that address the subject matter from a different perspective or in greater detail.

In spite of this self-effacing, highly valuable approach, a number of these essays address topics that continue to remain unexplored or underexplored. For example, "Church Courts, Marriage Breakdown, and Separation in Spanish Louisiana, West Florida, and Texas," provides much needed insight into how Spanish colonial courts dealt with marital disputes involving adultery and domestic abuse. Cummins discovers that colonial officials were not cold and unfeeling bureaucrats bent solely on enforcing state and church edicts, but frequently offered practical, albeit patriarchal, solutions that protected women and punished abusive husbands. In another insightful article that challenges traditional understanding about gender relations on the colonial frontier, Cummins details the story of Anne McMeans, a Pennsylvania woman of humble origins who went west to Louisiana during the American Revolution. After a series of escalating tragedies, including the death of her husband, she decided the West was not for her and set out for home, a difficult endeavor considering that the trip to Louisiana had left her and her family penniless. This tale provides an interesting temporal, geographical, and gendered juxtaposition to the oft-repeated narrative of the single young adult American male who headed west in the mid-nineteenth century to make his home and fortune.

McMeans's story also provides valuable insight into the material motivation for the westward movement of middle and lower class Anglo Americans, or "frontier folk" as Cummins refers to them, thereby addressing a demographic group that historians have overlooked in recent years. The book's first article, "An Enduring Community" finds that many Anglo American settlers moved into British West Florida prior to the American Revolution to acquire land. In order to retain titles to this land, the settlers stayed in Florida after Spanish takeover, but, much like later American settlers in Texas, their community remained culturally distinct from that of their new government. Other articles focus on Anglo American merchants who moved to New Orleans while it was under Spanish rule to deal in slaves, land, and agricultural commodities, and tied the economy of Louisiana to that of the eastern United States through currency manipulation and preexisting business partnerships. Even the four articles that concern colonial...