Social Change in the Southwest, 1350-1880

by Thomas D. Hall

This volume traces the evolution and interaction of Native American groups, Hispanic soldiers and settlers, and American pioneers—and the clash of national powers—in the Southwest. Against the backdrop of global and regional processes, Hall chronicles the way previously autonomous groups were transformed into ethnic minorities, some groups were destroyed, and others were assimilated and survived.

"A ground-breaking volume that merits serious consideration by all scholars who are interested in understanding the development of the American Southwest."— American Anthropologist

"This book will have an impact on Mexican and American national histories. . . . Scholars and history enthusiasts of the Borderlands and the American West will benefit greatly from it. Instructors who teach either of these fields should not fail to assign it; their students will be richer for having read it."— Journal of American History

"This is an impressive book. It should be evaluated within two genres. The first is other histories of frontier interaction in the U.S. Southwest. In this context it is very clear that Hall's book will replace earlier works as the standard. The second genre is now a large corpus of studies that closely examine the processes of incorporation and peripheralization into the expanding Europe-centered world-system as they occur within a particular region. . . . In this context Hall's is certainly one of the very best."—Christopher Chase Dunn in Contemporary Sociology

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[David Nichols · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thomas Hall is a sociologist and writes like one (lots of vague or overly-technical language), so I am not surprised this important study of the Southwest got less attention than it deserved. The 1989 monograph argues that we can best understand historical change in early New Mexico by applying the "world-systems" framework of Immanuel Wallerstein. Southwestern North America was, in this framework, a peripheral region that industrial core zones wanted to "incorporate" and exploit. However, Hall eventually uncovers a more complicated dynamic in the region, and his proposal that we elaborate upon the definition of "periphery" - dividing it into "contact" peripheries, "refuge" peripheries, and "dependent" peripheries - makes him an insightful precursor of the "new frontier history" developed by Richard White and Kathleen DuVal.

SOCIAL CHANGE begins with the emergence of a complex, village-based society in New Mexico by 1300 CE. Hall hypothesizes that the indigenous states in central Mexico tried to incorporate New Mexico's Pueblos through cultural influence, but enjoyed little success. Spain then made a more vigorous incorporative effort in the early-modern period. More specifically, a Spanish army under Juan de Onate conquered the province in 1598-99, and officials subsequently used force to extort tribute from the Pueblos and labor from Athabascan captives. The region's inhabitants resisted this conquest with equal vigor: the Pueblos either fled their villages or rose in revolt (especially in 1680), while the Athabascans adopted horses, guns, and anti-Spanish raiding in the early eighteenth century. Spain had to adopt a more accommodating posture after the 1693 reconquest, and New Mexico became a "periphery of refuge," a region of localized trade, diplomacy, and "enforced stagnation" (90-135, quote 17).

Spain eventually made a second bid to incorporate the Southwest, this time through economic development. Under the Bourbon reformers (1765-1821) Spanish colonists opened new ranches and mines and expanded trade with Chihuahua. New Mexico and its peripheries enriched some metropolitan Spaniards, but wealth also accumulated in the coffers of a local merchant class, the ricos, who bought up land and pursued closer relations with the United States. Trade and intermarriage drew these bourgeois closer to Anglo-Americans and out of Spain and Mexico's economic orbit. Ultimately, the United States used its army and other resources to conquer New Mexico and exploit its resources more comprehensively than other empires had done. The Southwest's marginality within the United States did allow the locals to retain control of their culture, and to this extent New Mexico remained a "periphery of refuge" (235-61).

The Southwest thus reminds us that while broad, world-historical theories help us deepen our historical understanding, local circumstances oblige us to elaborate upon those theories, to acknowledge the important role played by local actors and how they complicate what we assume to have been smooth historical processes. It is an observation that one could as easily apply to other contested borderlands in North America (such as the Arkansas Valley or the Great Lakes), or to rural and "underdeveloped" regions throughout the world.