Introduction
Truett and Elliot start their brilliant book by introducing readers to long-standing and contemporary debates concerning the nature of borders, frontiers, and different borderlands in a general manner. Among the primary assumptions the authors are pursuing and trying to convince readers in is that they “see beyond the nation, even as we keep the nation in focus” (p. 1) Authors thoroughly outline the main differences, collisions, and contradictions between Herbert Bolton borderland theoretical schools and Chicano historians.
Until recently Mexican and Spanish borderland histories were separated fields of study which not very frequently overlapped with the studies of Mexican-American relations and borders. Besides this as the authors claim in the second chapter of their books the borderland histories of Southwest America and Mexican territories were separated without any adequate scientific and cognitive reasons.
Main text
Hence, the main purpose of this book as the authors suggest going in line with Weber school is to “recover the hidden relationships between borderland histories” (p. 6).
The book is organized into fours sections each drawing on the conference materials.
Many chapters are written by famous historians.
The first history essay is written by Raul Ramos analyzes the crucial role realized by Indian and Mexican relations during Spanish and Mexican periods of Texas history.
Ramos shows how important was to negotiate the middle ground between different people to find compromise resolutions to the border problems. The frontier environment according to Ramos was such were “life involved direct contact with many different cultures, entailed the ever-present possibility of violence, and required the flexibility… to craft a secure peace” (p. 59).
The next several chapters reveal the borderline experiences of some other ethnicities such as Russian, African American, and Chinese. Grace Pena Delgado shows persuasively how Chinese emigrants due to major limitations on the part of American governments managed to infiltrate the United States by using Mexican citizenship and some of them even became quite prosperous. The border restrictions that followed after 1900 radically changed the situation putting the end to informal movements of the population.
Jacoby reveals the life of William Ellis, an African American with light skin who had quite a flexible identity formed at the end of the nineteenth century. He managed to present himself by different identities including Cuban, African American, and Mexican. Born to former slaves family in Texas he changed his identity to a Hispanic businessman and borderland who lived and worked in the United States and Mexico (Pearson, 2006). Using his large network of partners and friends he managed to settle more than twenty thousand African Americans in Mexico and sought out many Alabama blacks to Mexico as well (p. 205).
Truett continues with the story of Emilio Kosterlitzky who was a Russian immigrant to a Mexican country where he became the prominent military official in the northern territories of Mexico playing the role of a link between American mining business and various commercial interests in Mexico before the Mexican Revolution. During his career as an Indian fighter and Mexican officer he was as Truett claims, “a twin agent of the Mexican state and transnational corporate power” who prided himself on being a professional soldier and protector of the Mexican frontier (p. 257).
Following this chapter, Johnson provides a very good and concise summary of his recent book named Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans (New Haven, 2003). To be laconic this article reveals how the features of Americanism penetrated the Mexican political and social culture.
Summary
To sum it up, the collection of essays presented in this book is an important contribution to the developing field of borderland and transnational studies in history.
References
Truett, Samuel and Young, Elliott (Eds). Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History, Duke University Press, 2004.
Pearson, Byron. “Frontier Texas: History of a Borderland to 1880.” Journal of Southern History 72.3 (2006): 647-672.