I find the American southwest very comfy and want to learn more about the short lived Mexican era. It seems overlooked by most American and Mexican historians alike because it was almost immediately followed by the American civil war and the Mexican reform wars.
>>18428177The American Southwest was always culturally distinct from the rest of Mexico, the land grant system meant that everyone who settled north were wealthy missionaries, aristocratic wine makers, and retired military leaders and when push came to shove, none of them even wanted to be Mexican. There was very little resistance to American occupation. The entire Bear Flag Revolt consisted of a bunch of non-battles where the US military shows up to forts and the Mexican army just throwing their hands in the air and surrendering. They knew that Americans provided a more stable government that would do a better job at protecting their wealth in the long term. California's more Mediterranean climate was very different from Mexico's more tropical climate. Southwestern Spanish Colonial architecture has a very distinct look and feel about it that is different from it's southern counterparts
>>18428198VGH, old California, a land of Anglo-Scots American frontiersmen and criollo Spaniard aristocrats. Shame what it turned into these past 50 plus years.
>>18428206It wasn't universally like that, this is more a distinctly California phenomenon, Tejanos for example were mostly poorer, mix Creoles
despite what hispanos themselves pushed, the "spaniards" up north were/are mestizos with families from modern day mexico. they were also betrayed by white americans after annexation
>>18428177The book The Comanche Empire has some good chapters, skip the boring garbage chapters.basically it was a place that never really had any government or competent Mexican settlers (by competent I mean being capable of defending from Indian raids or creating an economic base that could sustain a defense from raids). The Mexican settlers begged Mexico City for help and were ignored, the region was basically a giant open-air slave plantation where Comanche raided Mexicans for cattle/horses/slaves(enslaving free Mexicans) and whatever else. The Comanche's power was only ended with the arrival of the Anglo settlers who were organized and could fight back against the Comanche unlike the Mexicans. The book doesn't cover California though, as that was not part of Comanche raiding territory.
