The Comanche Empire

by Pekka Hämäläinen

That erosion of political ties went hand in hand with a sweeping economic realignment that saw New Mexico shifting its commercial system from south to east. Comanche raiding south of the Río Grande dissolved old economic lifelines between Mexico City and the northern frontier, pushing New Mexico to intensify its reliance on the markets and goods of Comanchería and the United States. Mexico City fought this development, trying to infuse the northern frontier with national institutions, rules, and rituals, but it was powerless to offset the combined gravitational power of Comanchería and the United States. By the mid-1840s, just prior to the Mexican-American War, New Mexicans across the social strata had grown openly defiant toward Mexico City’s centralist government, whose nation-building project they thought was at odds with their economic and political interests, which had long ago become affixed to the power and wealth flowing in from the east.