A New History of Old Texas

From 1838 to 1840, the people of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas fought against the Mexican central government for their independence. They fought under the battlefield leadership of one of the most remarkable men in Texas history and – as best I can tell – the only Afro-Tejano to have a Texas county named after him: Antonio Zapata. For the better part of a year, Zapata reigned supreme as the military leader of the region and as the avatar of his people. With his army of Rio Grande vaqueros, Carrizo Indians, and Anglo-Texian volunteers, he held as many as three Mexican centralist armies at bay, and won the respect of his enemies and the love of his men.
In following Antonio Zapata’s fight for Federalism, we also get a sort of second run at the war of Texas independence. It serves as a sort of control case to help us understand what it was that Tejanos – like Juan Seguin, who will actually later joined the Rio Grande independence movement –meant when they signed on to fight and die for their “independence.” In this light, Tejano independence comes to look like something very different than the classic, Anglo-American notion of independence as a “fresh start.” In fact, I’ll argue that it starts to look like something much more recognizably Texan. It’s looks like a fight for autonomy within a tradition, rather than independence from tradition.
Join us for Season 4 of A New History of Old Texas: The Republic of the Rio Grande.
Selected Bibliography
Anna, Timothy E. Forging Mexico: 1821-1835 (1998).
Casa Blanca Articles of Convention
De la Garza, Lorenzo. Dos Hermanos Heroes (1939).
Gallegos, Juan José. “Last Drop of My Blood: Col. Antonio Zapata: A Life and Times on México’s Río Grande Frontier, 1797-1840.”
Lack, Paul D. Searching for the Republic of the Rio Grande (2022).
Lott, Virgil N. and Mercurio Martinez. The Kingdom of Zapata (1953).
Nance, Joseph. After San Jacinto: The Texas Mexican Frontier, 1836-1841 (1970).
Plan del Rancho de Puntiagudo. University of St. Andrews.
Vázquez, Josefina Zoraida. La Supuesta República del Río Grande (1995).

www.BrandonSeale.com

Episode 3 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Engines of Texas History.
When they hosted the Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936, Dallas boosters had good reason to rename their football stadium and associated bowl game based on a bad pun. The "Cotton Bowl" was a nod to the unmatched roll that "King Cotton" had played in shaping the demographics and politics of Texas, where it constituted as much as 90% of the output of the state for parts of the nineteenth century. But it’s a legacy that Texans have become increasingly uncomfortable with in recent decades, favoring the image of the cowboy and cattle drives. There is something far more romantic about a man on a horse than a man with a hoe...particularly when that man with the hoe is enslaved.
Cover art "Young Texas in Repose" available online from Yale University Library.
Sources:
Torget, Andrew J. Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 (2015).

www.BrandonSeale.com

Episode 8 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Engines of Texas History.
Texas's first true industrial "cluster" might have been ice-making. In the twentieth century, Texans lead the way in applying the science of refrigeration to human comfort and notched many significant firsts in the history of air conditioning. Most Texans' first experience with air conditioning was in movie theaters, and the movie industry repaid their patronage with an entire genre of films (the "Western") that helped make Texas "cool" in a way that it never had been before. The homogenizing effects of cinema worsened the marginalization of some Texas communities, however, even as it drove a massive wave of immigration from other U.S. states.
Photo courtesy of Friedrich Air Conditioning.
Sources:

Arsenault, Raymond. “The End of the Long, Hot Summer: The Air Conditioner and Southern Culture.” The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Nov 1984): 597-628.
Cooper, Gail. Air Conditioning America: Engineers and Controlled Environment, 1900-1960 (1998).
Swanson, Philip. “Remember the Alamo? Mexicans, Texans, and Americans in 1960’s Hollywood.” Iberoamericana, Año 11, No. 44 (Dic 2011): 85-100.
Woolrich, W.R. The Men Who Created Cold. New York, NY: Exposition Press, 1967.

www.BrandonSeale.com

Intro to Brandon Seale's podcast (in collaboration with Art Martínez de Vara) on the life and times of José Francisco Ruíz.
José Francisco Ruíz lived through the most turbulent years of Texas history. What was it about Ruíz that always seemed to place him at the center of the action? What made him the man to whom Tejanos, Anglos, and Native Americans all turned in uncertain times? Join us to find out what made José Francisco Ruíz "The Man for Texas."
Click here to purchase the complete audiobook of "Tejano Patriot" by Art Martínez de Vara and read by Brandon Seale.

www.BrandonSeale.com

From 1838 to 1840, the people of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas fought against the Mexican central government for their independence. They fought under the battlefield leadership of one of the most remarkable men in Texas history and – as best I can tell – the only Afro-Tejano to have a Texas county named after him: Antonio Zapata. For the better part of a year, Zapata reigned supreme as the military leader of the region and as the avatar of his people. With his army of Rio Grande vaqueros, Carrizo Indians, and Anglo-Texian volunteers, he held as many as three Mexican centralist armies at bay, and won the respect of his enemies and the love of his men. 

In following Antonio Zapata’s fight for Federalism, we also get a sort of second run at the war of Texas independence. It serves as a sort of control case to help us understand what it was that Tejanos – like Juan Seguin, who will actually later joined the Rio Grande independence movement –meant when they signed on to fight and die for their “independence.” In this light, Tejano independence comes to look like something very different than the classic, Anglo-American notion of independence as a “fresh start.” In fact, I’ll argue that it starts to look like something much more recognizably Texan. It’s looks like a fight for autonomy within a tradition, rather than independence from tradition.

Join us for Season 4 of A New History of Old Texas: The Republic of the Rio Grande.