Before Gold: California under Spain and Mexico Series
About the Series
This series will gather new scholarship exploring culture, conflict, and events in colonial and provincial Alta and Baja California under Spain and Mexico during the Spanish, Mexican, and early American eras. Potential volumes will include studies of the missions, biographies, preservation studies, architectural history, material culture, presidios, and other appropriate topics.
Series editors Beebe and Senkewicz are noted scholars of the era. They are on the faculty of Santa Clara University, and have previously published several works on California history.
Subscriptions to the series from individuals and institutions are welcome. Contact us today to avoid missing any future volumes.
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Californio Portraits
Baja California's Vanishing Culture
This updated and expanded version of that now-classic work incorporates the fruits of further investigation into the Californios’ lives and history, by Crosby and others. Californio Portraits combines history and sociology to provide an in-depth view of a culture that has managed to survive dramatic changes.
Recuerdos
Historical and Personal Remembrances Relating to Alta California, 1769–1849 (2 Volume Set)
Out of keeping with Bancroft’s American triumphalism, Vallejo’s monumental project was consigned to the archives, where it has remained for well over a century. With their deft translation and commentary, Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz—authors of a companion volume on Vallejo’s work—have brought to light a remarkable perspective, often firsthand, on important events in early California history. Their efforts restore a critical chapter to the story of California and the American West.
Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo
Life in Spanish, Mexican, and American California
A long-overdue in-depth look at one of the preeminent Mexican Americans in nineteenth-century California, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo also provides an unprecedented view of the Mexican American experience during that transformative era.
Junípero Serra
California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary
In Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary, Beebe and Senkewicz focus on Serra’s religious identity and his relations with Native peoples. They intersperse their narrative with new and accessible translations of many of Serra’s letters and sermons, which allows his voice to be heard in a more direct and engaging fashion.
Vineyards and Vaqueros
Indian Labor and the Economic Expansion of Southern California, 1771–1877
Indian labor was vital to the early economic development of the Los Angeles region. This volume explores for the first time Native contributions to early Southern California. Based on exhaustive research, Phillips’s account focuses on California Indians more as workers than as victims. He describes the work they performed and how their relations evolved with the missionaries, settlers, and rancheros who employed them. Phillips emphasizes the importance of Indian labor in shaping the economic history of what is now Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties.
Contest for California
From Spanish Colonization to the American Conquest
In vivid detail, award-winning author Stephen G. Hyslop traces the story of early California from its founding in 1769 by Spanish colonists to its annexation in 1848 by the United States. He describes the motivations and activities of colonizers and colonized alike. Using eyewitness accounts, he allows all participants—Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American—to have their say. Soldiers, settlers, missionaries, and merchants testify to the heroic and commonplace, the colorful and tragic, in California’s pre-American history. Exhaustively researched yet concise, this book offers a much-needed alternative history of early California and its evolution from Spanish colony to American territory.
Colonial Intimacies
Interethnic Kinship, Sexuality, and Marriage in Southern California, 1769–1885
In Colonial Intimacies, Erika Pérez probes everyday relationships, encounters, and interactions to show how intimate choices about marriage, social networks, and godparentage were embedded in larger geopolitical concerns.
Beyond the Devil's Road
Francisco Garcés and the Spanish Encounter with the American Southwest
Consulting archives on three continents, including previously untapped sources and Garcés’s extensive diaries and letters, long obscured by unyielding language and handwriting, Beer crafts a nuanced and thoroughly engaging account of this incomparable explorer, groundbreaking missionary, and central actor in New Spain’s final sustained effort to expand its dominion into the lands that would become the American Southwest.
Californio Portraits
Baja California's Vanishing Culture
This updated and expanded version of that now-classic work incorporates the fruits of further investigation into the Californios’ lives and history, by Crosby and others. Californio Portraits combines history and sociology to provide an in-depth view of a culture that has managed to survive dramatic changes.
Recuerdos
Historical and Personal Remembrances Relating to Alta California, 1769–1849 (2 Volume Set)
Out of keeping with Bancroft’s American triumphalism, Vallejo’s monumental project was consigned to the archives, where it has remained for well over a century. With their deft translation and commentary, Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz—authors of a companion volume on Vallejo’s work—have brought to light a remarkable perspective, often firsthand, on important events in early California history. Their efforts restore a critical chapter to the story of California and the American West.
Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo
Life in Spanish, Mexican, and American California
A long-overdue in-depth look at one of the preeminent Mexican Americans in nineteenth-century California, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo also provides an unprecedented view of the Mexican American experience during that transformative era.
Junípero Serra
California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary
In Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary, Beebe and Senkewicz focus on Serra’s religious identity and his relations with Native peoples. They intersperse their narrative with new and accessible translations of many of Serra’s letters and sermons, which allows his voice to be heard in a more direct and engaging fashion.
Vineyards and Vaqueros
Indian Labor and the Economic Expansion of Southern California, 1771–1877
Indian labor was vital to the early economic development of the Los Angeles region. This volume explores for the first time Native contributions to early Southern California. Based on exhaustive research, Phillips’s account focuses on California Indians more as workers than as victims. He describes the work they performed and how their relations evolved with the missionaries, settlers, and rancheros who employed them. Phillips emphasizes the importance of Indian labor in shaping the economic history of what is now Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties.
Contest for California
From Spanish Colonization to the American Conquest
In vivid detail, award-winning author Stephen G. Hyslop traces the story of early California from its founding in 1769 by Spanish colonists to its annexation in 1848 by the United States. He describes the motivations and activities of colonizers and colonized alike. Using eyewitness accounts, he allows all participants—Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American—to have their say. Soldiers, settlers, missionaries, and merchants testify to the heroic and commonplace, the colorful and tragic, in California’s pre-American history. Exhaustively researched yet concise, this book offers a much-needed alternative history of early California and its evolution from Spanish colony to American territory.
Colonial Intimacies
Interethnic Kinship, Sexuality, and Marriage in Southern California, 1769–1885
In Colonial Intimacies, Erika Pérez probes everyday relationships, encounters, and interactions to show how intimate choices about marriage, social networks, and godparentage were embedded in larger geopolitical concerns.
Beyond the Devil's Road
Francisco Garcés and the Spanish Encounter with the American Southwest
Consulting archives on three continents, including previously untapped sources and Garcés’s extensive diaries and letters, long obscured by unyielding language and handwriting, Beer crafts a nuanced and thoroughly engaging account of this incomparable explorer, groundbreaking missionary, and central actor in New Spain’s final sustained effort to expand its dominion into the lands that would become the American Southwest.