Donald E. Chipman

From 1519, when an expedition sailed along the coast, to 1821, when Mexico became independent, Texas was part of the Spanish empire. The Spanish didn’t have much use for it; the center of the Spanish New World was Mexico City. A few settlers made desultory attempts to farm or ranch and a few soldiers made desultory attempts to stave off Comanches. Things changed a little when France took some interest; there was French encroachment from Louisiana and the French attempted a colony on the show more Gulf of Mexico coast. The later ended in disaster from inadequate supplies; the French in East Texas were more interested in trading with the natives than settlement. Texas remained Spanish, but a backwater until the advent of American immigrants – but by then it was Mexico’s problem.

It’s noted, though, that there are still some holdovers from Spanish times in Texas law; for example, adoption law and community property law follow Spanish practice, which is more favorable to adopted children and married women than Anglo law.

An interesting read. Authors Donald Chpaman and Harriet Joseph note that one aspect of Spanish Texas was an obsession with bureaucratic records, which is a big help to modern historians. A large bibliography and useful maps. show less

I rereading this about 10 years after I first read it. It is still not easy. I find the Spanish names of people and locations difficult to keep up with due to my almost non-existent Spanish language knowledge. This is however the only book that focuses on this time period in Texas history. The last chapter has an interesting legacy of remnants of Spanish TX that have lasted until to day which i found quite interesting. It appears much of it is not just geographic names and words, but rather show more many legal concepts and principals that are unique to TX compared to states with a more British background. Chipman teaches (or at least did when he wrote this book) at North Tx, but has a sober an realistic view of TX history unlike some biased writers (TR Fehrenbach for example). show less