A detailed history of the Indians of Texas and the Near Southwest from the late 18th to the middle 19th century, a period that began with Native peoples dominating the region and ended with their disappearance, after settlers forced the Indians in Texas to take refuge in Indian Territory.

By the late 1810s, a global revolution in cotton had remade the U.S.-Mexico border, bringing wealth and waves of Americans to the Gulf Coast while also devastating the lives and villages of Mexicans in Texas. In response, Mexico threw open its northern territories to American farmers in hopes that cotton could bring prosperity to the region. Thousands of Anglo-Americans poured into Texas, but their insistence that slavery accompany them sparked pitched battles across Mexico. An extraordinary alliance of Anglos and Mexicans in Texas came together to defend slavery against abolitionists in the Mexican government, beginning a series of fights that culminated in the Texas Revolution. In the aftermath, Anglo-Americans rebuilt the Texas borderlands into the most unlikely creation: the first fully committed slaveholders' republic in North America. Seeds of Empire tells the remarkable story of how the cotton revolution of the early nineteenth century transformed northeastern Mexico into the western edge of the United States, and how the rise and spectacular collapse of the Republic of Texas as a nation built on cotton and slavery proved to be a blueprint for the Confederacy of the 1860s.

Kathleen M. Byrd’s Natchitoches, Louisiana, 1803–1840 is an examination of one French Creole community as it transitioned from a fur-trading and agricultural settlement under the control of Spain to a critical American outpost on the Spanish/American frontier and finally to a commercial hub and jumping-off point for those heading west. Byrd focuses on historic events in the area and the long-term French Creole residents as they adapted to the American presence. She also examines the effect of the arrival of the Americans, with their Indian trading house and Indian agency, on Native groups and considers how members of the enslaved population took advantage of opportunities for escape presented by a new international border. Byrd shows how the arrival of Americans forever changed Natchitoches, transforming it from a sleepy frontier settlement into a regional commercial center and staging point for pioneers heading into Texas.

The Ecology of Sulawesi is a comprehensive ecological survey of one of Indonesia's least populated and most diverse islands. It is hoped that it will prove useful to resource managers, ecologists, environmental scientists and local government personnel, and be enlightening to Sulawesi's inhabitants and visitors. Sulawesi is one of the least-known islands of Indonesia, and wise environmental management, including the proper assessment of environmental management, including the proper assessment of environmental impacts arising from development projects and other activities, is currently very difficult.

"Historically, wars and revolutions have offered politically and socially disadvantaged people the opportunity to contribute to the nation (or cause) in exchange for future expanded rights. Although shorter than most conflicts, the Texas Revolution nonetheless profoundly affected not only the leaders and armies, but the survivors, especially women, who endured those tumultuous events and whose lives were altered by the accompanying political, social, and economic changes.

This book provides a comprehensive review of hermaphroditism in fishes. It focuses on the behavioral ecology of functional hermaphroditism in fishes and discusses its evolution. Approximately 99% of all vertebrate species consist of separate-sex individuals (gonochorists), i.e., pure males and pure females. The other 1% of vertebrate species are hermaphroditic, and almost all of them are fishes. Among hermaphroditic fishes, four major types of hermaphroditism are known: simultaneous (or synchronous) hermaphroditism, protandry (male-to-female sex change), protogyny (female-to-male sex change), and bidirectional sex change (or reversed sex change in protogynous species). The book examines the occurrence of hermaphroditism in relation to phylogeny and mating systems. It also reviews the hypotheses for the evolution of hermaphroditism, and the size-advantage model, which is the main theory for the evolution of sex change, tested in relation to the mating system. The appendix in the last chapter provides an annotated list of hermaphroditic fish species (ca. 500 spp.).

In this biography of Joaquín de Arredondo, historian Bradley Folsom brings to life one of the most influential and ruthless leaders in North American history. Arredondo (1776–1837), a Bourbon loyalist who governed Texas and the other interior provinces of northeastern New Spain during the Mexican War of Independence, contended with attacks by revolutionaries, U.S. citizens, generals who had served in Napoleon’s army, pirates, and various American Indian groups, all attempting to wrest control of the region. Often resorting to violence to deal with the provinces’ problems, Arredondo was for ten years the most powerful official in northeastern New Spain. Folsom’s lively account shows the challenges of governing a vast and inhospitable region and provides insight into nineteenth-century military tactics and Spanish viceregal realpolitik. When Arredondo and his army—which included Arredondo’s protégé, future president of Mexico Antonio López de Santa Anna—arrived in Nuevo Santander in 1811, they quickly suppressed a revolutionary upheaval. Arredondo went on to expel an army of revolutionaries and invaders from the United States who had taken over Texas and declared it an independent republic. In the Battle of Medina, the bloodiest battle ever fought in Texas, he crushed the insurgents and followed his victory with a purge that reduced Texas’s population by half. Over the following eight years, Arredondo faced fresh challenges to Spanish sovereignty ranging from Comanche and Apache raids to continued American incursion. In response, Arredondo ignored his superiors and ordered his soldiers to terrorize those who disagreed with him. Arredondo’s actions had dramatic repercussions in Texas, Mexico, and the United States. His decision to allow Moses Austin to colonize Texas with Americans would culminate in the defeat of Santa Anna in 1836, but not before Santa Anna had made good use of the lessons in brutality he had learned so well from his mentor.

In 1991 Walter L. Buenger and the late Robert A. Calvert compiled a pioneering work in Texas historiography: Texas Through Time, a seminal survey and critique of the field of Texas history from its inception through the end of the 1980s. Now, Buenger and Arnoldo De León have assembled an important new collection that assesses the current state of Texas historiography, building on the many changes in understanding and interpretation that have developed in the nearly twenty years since the publication of the original volume. This new work, Beyond Texas Through Time, departs from the earlier volume’s emphasis on the dichotomy between traditionalism and revisionism as they applied to various eras. Instead, the studies in this book consider the topical and thematic understandings of Texas historiography embraced by a new generation of Texas historians as they reflect analytically on the work of the past two decades. The resulting approaches thus offer the potential of informing the study of themes and topics other than those specifically introduced in this volume, extending its usefulness well beyond a review of the literature. In addition, the volume editors’ introduction proposes the application of cultural constructionism as an important third perspective on the thematic and topical analyses provided by the other contributors. Beyond Texas Through Time offers both a vantage point and a benchmark, serving as an important reference for scholars and advanced students of history and historiography, even beyond the borders of Texas.

A sweeping, comparative analysis of the slaving regimes of Hispanic, Comanche, and Anglo American communities in the Texas borderlands during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.