The Republic of Cotton
06/22/23 • 29 min
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 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
Previous Episode
The Font of Texas Government
Episode 2 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Engines of Texas History.
When Don Juan de Oñate crossed the Rio Grande on May 4, 1598 at a spot which he called “El Paso del Rio del Norte”, he didn’t just bring with him the horses that would redraw the map of Native Texas. He brought with him the Spanish model of self-government centered on a locally-managed flood irrigation system that still serves today as the philosophical underpinning of the Texas "frontier regulatory model." It was the only real competitive advantage that the Spanish had over native Texas populations...but was it enough to build a permanent civil society around?
Cover photo of "San Juan Demonstration Farm" available online at https://www.nps.gov/places/mission-san-juan-farm.htm.
Sources:
Aventuras con el agua: La administración del agua de riego: historia y teoría. Ed by Jacinta Palerm y Tomás Martínez Saldaña. Montecillo, Texcoco: Colegio de Posgraduados, 2009.
Porter, Charles R. Spanish Water, Anglo Water: Early Development in San Antonio (2011).
www.BrandonSeale.com
Next Episode
"Peacemaker"
Episode 4 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Engines of Texas History.
Samuel Colt certainly benefitted from the association of his revolving pistol with the state that most found widespread application for it use. And Texans, by and large, returned the love, coming to believe that "God made man, but Samuel Colt made them equal." Did the Colt Revolver blaze the trail for Anglo immigration into the Western half of the state? Or did the power imbalance it created violently accelerate a demographic inevitability?
Cover art is available in the Public Domain and online.
Sources:
Rasenberger, Jim. Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter that Changed America (2020).
www.BrandonSeale.com
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/a-new-history-of-old-texas-6078/the-republic-of-cotton-30977244"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to the republic of cotton on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy