In late 1833 Mexico began to have serious fears that its northeastern territory in Texas would be lost to North American colonists. To determine the actual state of affairs, Mexico sent Col. Juan N. Almonte to Texas on an inspection -- the last conducted by a high-ranking Mexican official before revolution separated Texas from Mexico. Upon his return to the Mexican capital in November 1834, Almonte wrote a secret report of the measures necessary to avoid the loss of Texas -- a report that has been unknown to scholars or the general public. Here it is presented in English for the first time, along with more than fifty letters that Almonte wrote during his inspection. This documentation offers crucial new insights on Texas affairs and will change the way historians regard Mexico's attitudes toward the foreign colonists and their revolution of 1835-1836. When Santa Anna marched an army north to crush the Texas rebellion, Almonte was by his side as a special adviser. He kept a journal, lost at the Battle of San Jacinto, which is presented here with full annotation. Almonte's role in the 1836 campaign is examined, as well as his subsequent activities that relate to Texas. Through Almonte's Texas we gain an overdue appreciation of this man who played a leading role in the history of Texas and Mexico. As James E. Crisp said in his review of this work: "This is a fascinating, revelatory, and highly satisfying book for anyone interested in the real meat of the story of the Texas Revolution -- in all its political, military and diplomatic dimensions. The editors have put Almonte in the center of this story of Texas in the 1830s and 40s, and that's exactly where he belongs. Bravo!"

Now in its 11th edition, Texas: The Lone Star State offers a balanced, scholarly overview of the second largest state in the United States, spanning from prehistory to the twenty-first century. Organized chronologically, this comprehensive survey introduces undergraduates to the varied history of Texas with an accessible narrative and over 100 illustrations and maps. This new edition broadens the discussion of postwar social and political dynamics within the state, including the development of key industries and changing demographics. Other new features include: New maps reflecting county by county results for the most recent presidential elections Expanded discussions on immigration and border security The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas and a look to the future Updated bibliographies to reflect the most recent scholarship This textbook is essential reading for students of American history.

Every place is a product of the stories we tell about it—stories that do not merely describe but in fact shape geographic, social, and cultural spaces. Lone Star Vistas analyzes travelogues that created the idea of Texas. Focusing on the forty-year period between Mexico’s independence from Spain (1821) and the beginning of the US Civil War, Astrid Haas explores accounts by Anglo-American, Mexican, and German authors—members of the region’s three major settler populations—who recorded their journeys through Texas. They were missionaries, scientists, journalists, emigrants, emigration agents, and military officers and their spouses. They all contributed to the public image of Texas and to debates about the future of the region during a time of political and social transformation. Drawing on sources and scholarship in English, Spanish, and German, Lone Star Vistas is the first comparative study of transnational travel writing on Texas. Haas illuminates continuities and differences across the global encounter with Texas, while also highlighting how individual writers’ particular backgrounds affected their views on nature, white settlement, military engagement, Indigenous resistance, African American slavery, and Christian mission.

For twenty years the Historical Atlas of Texas stood as a trusted resource for students and aficionados of the state. Now this key reference has been thoroughly updated and expanded—and even rechristened. Texas: A Historical Atlas more accurately reflects the Lone Star State at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Its 86 entries feature 175 newly designed maps—more than twice the number in the original volume—illustrating the most significant aspects of the state’s history, geography, and current affairs. The heart of the book is its wealth of historical information. Sections devoted to indigenous peoples of Texas and its exploration and settlement offer more than 45 entries with visual depictions of everything from the routes of Spanish explorers to empresario grants to cattle trails. In another 31 articles, coverage of modern and contemporary Texas takes in hurricanes and highways, power plants and population trends. Practically everything about this atlas is new. All of the essays have been updated to reflect recent scholarship, while more than 30 appear for the first time, addressing such subjects as the Texas Declaration of Independence, early roads, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, Texas-Oklahoma boundary disputes, and the tideland oil controversy. A dozen new entries for “Contemporary Texas” alone chart aspects of industry, agriculture, and minority demographics. Nearly all of the expanded essays are accompanied by multiple maps—everyone in full color. The most comprehensive, state-of-the-art work of its kind, Texas: A Historical Atlas is more than just a reference. It is a striking visual introduction to the Lone Star State.

Herman Ehrenberg wrote the longest, most complete, and most vivid memoir of any soldier in the Texan revolutionary army. His narrative was published in Germany in 1843, but it was little used by Texas historians until the twentieth century, when the first—and very problematic—attempts at translation into English were made. Inside the Texas Revolution: The Enigmatic Memoir of Herman Ehrenberg is a product of the translation skills of the late Louis E. Brister with the assistance of James C. Kearney, both noted specialists on Germans in Texas. The volume’s editor, James E. Crisp, has spent much of the last 27 years solving many of the mysteries that still surrounded Ehrenberg’s life. It was Crisp who discovered that Ehrenberg lived in the Texas Republic until at least 1840, and spent the spring of that year as ranger on the frontier. Ehrenberg was not a historian, but an ordinary citizen whose narrative of the Texas Revolution contains both spectacular eyewitness accounts of action and almost mythologized versions of major events that he did not witness himself. This volume points out where Ehrenberg is lying or embellishing, explains why he is doing so, and narrates the actual relevant facts as far as they can be determined. Ehrenberg’s book is both a testament by a young Texan “everyman” who presents a laudatory paean to the Texan cause, and a German’s explanation of Texas and its “fight for freedom” against Mexico to his fellow Germans—with a powerful subtext that patriotic Germans should aspire to a similar struggle, and a similar outcome: a free, democratic republic.

How can the life of one relatively unknown man change our understanding of Texas history and the American West? Peter Ellis Bean, a fairly minor but fascinating character, casts unexpected light on conflicts, famous characters, and events from the time of Mexican rule through the years of the Republic. Bean’s role in Mexico’s revolution against Spain and his service as an agent of the Mexican government, especially as Indian agent in eastern Texas, provide an unusually vivid picture of Mexican Texas, as well as new information about the Indians in his region. More explosively, Jackson’s research on Bean’s career as Indian agent casts doubt on the traditional characterization of Sam Houston as a friend to the Texas Indians. Bean’s career shows Houston as a rival for the loyalty of the Indians during Texas’ rebellion against Mexico, a rival who made false promises for military and political gain. After Texas independence, Bean acquired vast lands in Texas, at one point holding more than 100,000 acres. A good citizen and a good businessman, involved with real estate, sawmills, salt works, agriculture, and stock raising, he was also a bigamist. Meticulously researched, dramatically written, and embodying a unique understanding of Mexican Texas, Jack Jackson’s chronicle of Peter Ellis Bean not only rescues him from relative obscurity but also corrects key aspects of the history in which he was involved and brings to life an era more often consigned to myth.

A fascinating new history of Texas that emphasizes the importance of Mexico's political culture in attracting US settlers and Texas's unique role in the nation-building efforts of both Mexico and the United States. Why did tens of thousands of Anglo settlers renounce their US citizenship and declare their loyalty to another country by migrating to the Mexican Republic of Texas between 1821 and 1836? In One National Family, Sarah K. M. Rodríguez challenges traditional assumptions about early North American history to draw new conclusions about the comparative power, viability, and nation-building of Mexico and the United States. Drawing from archival research in both countries, Rodríguez highlights a profound political irony at the core of US expansion—that it was spurred by US weakness and Mexican viability. Rodríguez argues that Mexican federalism, long blamed for the country's disintegration and instability, was precisely what attracted thousands of US immigrants to Mexican Texas. Mexico's comparatively weak fiscal structure, ample land, and commitment to dual sovereignty made it an appealing alternative to the thousands of US agrarians who were disillusioned with the United States' political and economic centralization. Yet if Mexico's political system was its strength in the 1820s, it would be the source of conflict and secession by the 1830s. Both Mexico and the United States confronted the limitations of federalism in their respective journeys from loosely confederated republics to consolidated, modern nation-states. But precisely because of its traumatic territorial losses in the mid-nineteenth century, Mexico embraced the characteristics of modern liberal democracy—majoritarianism, territorial sovereignty, and racial equality—far sooner than the United States did. Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.