Laredo is a city at the crossroads of North American history. Founded by the Spanish in 1755, it has stood at the intersection of regional commerce since its earliest days. Now, John A. Adams, Jr. provides the first-ever panoramic business and economic history of Laredo. He traces the evolution of the region from its early days as a ranching center into the mid-twentieth century, when Laredo had become what it remains today: a booming port of trade and a principal center of commerce and financial services on the southern border of the United States. In Commerce and Conflict on the Rio Grande Adams demonstrates how the increasingly diversified economy of the region fed the fortunes of the city. His narrative, buttressed throughout by tables and statistics, paints a vivid mural of both the economic forces and the farsighted and ambitious individuals that combined to bring prosperity to this unique American city. Readers will find a wealth of insights into regional economics, history, and borderlands themes.

The history of the Rio Grande since the late nineteenth century reflects the evolution of water-resource management in the West. It was here that the earliest interstate and international water-allocation problems pitted irrigators in southern New Mexico against farmers downstream in El Paso and Juarez, with the voluntary resolution of that conflict setting important precedents for national and international water law. In this first scholarly treatment of the politics of water law along the Rio Grande, Douglas R. Littlefield describes those early interstate and international water- apportionment conflicts and explains how they relate to the development of western water law and policy and to international relations with Mexico. Littlefield embraces environmental, legal, and social history to offer clear analyses of appropriation and riparian water rights doctrines, along with lucid accounts of court cases and laws. Examining events that led up to the 1904 settlement among U.S. and Mexican communities and the formation of the Rio Grande Compact in 1938, Littlefield describes how communities grappled over water issues as much with one another as with governmental authorities. Conflict on the Rio Grande reveals the transformation of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century law, traces changing attitudes about the role of government, and examines the ways these changes affected the use and eventual protection of natural resources. Rio Grande water policy, Littlefield shows, represents federalism at work—and shows the West, in one locale at least, coming to grips with its unique problems through negotiation and compromise.

The historical record of the Rio Grande valley through much of the nineteenth century reveals well-documented violence fueled by racial hatred, national rivalries, lack of governmental authority, competition for resources, and an international border that offered refuge to lawless men. Less noted is the region’s other everyday reality, one based on coexistence and cooperation among Mexicans, Anglo-Americans, and the Native Americans, African Americans, and Europeans who also inhabited the borderlands. War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830–1880 is a history of these parallel worlds focusing on a border that gave rise not only to violent conflict but also cooperation and economic and social advancement. Meeting here are the Anglo-Americans who came to the border region to trade, spread Christianity, and settle; Mexicans seeking opportunity in el norte; Native Americans who raided American and Mexican settlements alike for plunder and captives; and Europeans who crisscrossed the borderlands seeking new futures in a fluid frontier space. Historian Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga draws on national archives, letters, consular records, periodicals, and a host of other sources to give voice to borderlanders’ perspectives as he weaves their many, varied stories into one sweeping narrative. The tale he tells is one of economic connections and territorial disputes, of refugees and bounty hunters, speculation and stakeholding, smuggling and theft and other activities in which economic considerations often carried more weight than racial prejudice. Spanning the Anglo settlement of Texas in the 1830s, the Texas Revolution, the Republic of Texas , the US-Mexican War, various Indian wars, the US Civil War, the French intervention into Mexico, and the final subjugation of borderlands Indians by the combined forces of the US and Mexican armies, this is a magisterial work that forever alters, complicates, and enriches borderlands history. Published in association with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas

Brownsville photographer Robert Runyon's pictures document the development of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. His coverage of the bandit raids in 1915 and the U.S. military buildup along the border in 1916 is of great historical importance, as are his photos of the revolution in northeastern Mexico in 1913-1914.Samponaro and Vanderwood, using the Runyon collection of nearly 13,000 negatives and prints, shed new light on the history of the U.S. and Mexico. War Scare is a must for anyone interested in U.S. or borderlands history, or the history of photography. Number one in the Barker Texas History Center Series.

"Draws on national archives, letters, consular records, periodicals, and other sources to create a sweeping narrative of the history of the Rio Grande borderlands between 1830-1880 and the complex relations of violent conflict, cooperation, and economic and social advancement"--

Excerpt from A Brief History of the Lower Rio Grande Valley The present generation of Americans has known very little of that part of their country which lies along the Rio Grande and has had no realization of the ofttimes stirring scenes which have been enacted along their southern border. At different periods in the past the country has been stirred by the dramatic episodes and the conflicts growing out of the meeting of two entirely dissimilar peoples in that land of cactus and mesquite. But the present generation has known and thought little of that country until the conflict between these two races again blazed out and made the Rio Grande border once more a household topic in every village and every home in the United States. Strangely enough, there has been no connected historical statement of that region ever put in type or, so far as the writer knows, ever even written, and it has remained for Mr. Pierce to perform this service. Mr. Pierce has been a resident of Brownsville since 1859 and there is no one in all that long stretch bordering Mexico who has been in closer touch with the people of Mexico and with its customs and its language or has been a deeper student of its history on both sides of the river than Mr. Pierce. He, therefore, has performed a distinct service to the cause of history in thus putting into this little book the story, brief though it is. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.