{"title":"Before Gold: California Under Spain And Mexico Series","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"contest-for-california-book-stephen-g-hyslop-9780870624117","title":"Contest for California","description":"\u003cdiv\u003eCalifornia's early history was both colorful and turbulent. After Europeans first explored the region in the sixteenth century, it was conquered and colonized by successive waves of adventurers and settlers. In \u003ci\u003eContest for California\u003c\/i\u003e, award-winning author Stephen G. Hyslop draws on a wide array of primary sources to weave an elegant narrative of this epic struggle for control of the territory that many saw as a beautiful, sprawling land of promise.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In vivid detail, 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Even as he acknowledges the dark side of this story, Hyslop avoids a simplistic perspective. Moving beyond the polarities that have marked late-twentieth-century California historiography, he offers nuanced portraits of such controversial figures as Junípero Serra and treats the Californios and their distinctive Hispanic culture with a respect lacking in earlier histories. Attentive to tensions within the invading groups--priests and the military during the Spanish era, merchants and settlers during the American era--he also never loses sight of their impact on the original inhabitants of the region: California's Native peoples. He also recounts the journeys of colonists from Russia, England, and other countries who influenced the development of California as it passed from the hands of Spaniards and Mexicans to Americans.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Exhaustively researched yet concise, this book offers a much-needed alternative history of early California and its evolution from Spanish colony to American territory.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49996025626897,"sku":"CIN0870624113G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52620322308369,"sku":"NLS9780870624117","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0870624113.jpg?v=1767355514"},{"product_id":"californio-portraits-book-harry-w-crosby-9780806192147","title":"Californio Portraits","description":"Offers the most thorough and extensive account of the people of Baja California from the time of the peninsulas occupation by the Spaniards in the seventeenth century to the present. Californio Portraits combines history and sociology to provide an in-depth view of a culture that has managed to survive dramatic changes.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50554576371985,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50554576896273,"sku":"GOR013992614","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52689470554385,"sku":"NLS9780806192147","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0806192143.jpg?v=1767351348"},{"product_id":"junipero-serra-book-rose-marie-beebe-9780806165981","title":"Junipero Serra","description":"Franciscan missionary friar Junipero Serra (1713-1784), one of the most widely known and influential inhabitants of early California, embodied many of the ideas and practices that animated the Spanish presence in the Americas. This definitive biography brings this complex figure to life and illuminate the Spanish period of California.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50984505966865,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50984506097937,"sku":"NIN9780806165981","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0806165987.jpg?v=1767354044"},{"product_id":"junipero-serra-book-rose-marie-beebe-9780806148687","title":"Junipero Serra","description":"Focuses on Junipero Serra's religious identity and his relations with Native peoples. The authors 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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51324127871249,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51324130525457,"sku":"CIN0806148683G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53067487248657,"sku":"CIN0806148683VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0806148683.jpg?v=1751296733"},{"product_id":"beyond-the-devil-s-road-volume-8-book-jeremy-beer-9780806194578","title":"Beyond the Devil's Road Volume 8","description":"The explorations of Francisco Garcés, an intrepid Franciscan friar of the eighteenth century, led to the opening of the first overland route from Mexico to California, produced new knowledge of unmapped terrain and unknown peoples, and revived dreams of Spanish imperial expansion. Beyond the Devil’s Road tells, for the first time, the full story of this extraordinary man’s epic life and journey and his critical place in the history of the American Southwest.   From the moment he took up residence at the lonely mission of San Xavier del Bac in 1768, Garcés stood out among his fellow Spaniards for both the affection he showed the region’s Native peoples and his bravery. Traveling thousands of miles through modern Arizona, California, and Nevada to gather information for his superiors and preach to the unbaptized, he engaged the Indians of the Southwest with a respect for their ways and customs unprecedented among his peers, presaging a new—and better—model for cultural encounters. Along the way, he contacted more Indigenous groups than any other missionary of his time, often as the first European to do so. Garcés also paved the way and served as a guide for the famous expeditions of Juan Bautista de Anza in 1774 and 1775–76, bringing the first Spanish settlers to California—before the road he’d helped to open led to his death in the Quechan uprising of 1781.   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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51332656496913,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51332659511569,"sku":"CIN080619457XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52655346974993,"sku":"NLS9780806194578","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/080619457X.jpg?v=1767354480"},{"product_id":"californio-portraits-book-harry-w-crosby-9780806148694","title":"Californio Portraits","description":"Provudes the most thorough and extensive account of the people of Baja California from the time of the peninsula's occupation by the Spaniards in the seventeenth century to the present. Californio Portraits combines history and sociology to provide an in-depth view of a culture that has managed to survive dramatic changes.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52131852288273,"sku":"NLS9780806148694","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780806148694.jpg?v=1767356669"},{"product_id":"mariano-guadalupe-vallejo-book-rose-marie-beebe-9780806190761","title":"Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo","description":"Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807–90) grew up in Spanish California, became a leading military and political figure in Mexican California, and participated in some of the founding events of U.S. California. In 1874–75, Vallejo, working with historian and publisher Hubert Howe Bancroft, composed a five-volume history of Alta California—a monumental work that would be the most complete eyewitness account of California before the gold rush. But Bancroft shelved the work, and it has lain in the archives until its recent publication as Recuerdos: Historical and Personal Remembrances Relating to Alta California, 1769–1849, translated and edited by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz.   In Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo: Life in Spanish, Mexican, and American California, Beebe and Senkewicz not only illuminate Vallejo’s life and history but also examine the broader experience of the nineteenth-century Californio community. In eight essays, the authors consider Spanish and Mexican rule in California, mission secularization, the rise of rancho culture, and the conflicts between settlers and Indigenous Californians, especially in the post-mission era. Vallejo was uniquely positioned to provide insight into early California’s foundation, and as a defender of culture and education among Mexican Californians, he also offered a rare perspective on the cultural life of the Mexican American community. In their final chapter, Beebe and Senkewicz include a significant portion of the correspondence between Vallejo and his wife, Francisca Benicia, for what it reveals about the effects of the American conquest on family and gender roles.   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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52400486252817,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52400486940945,"sku":"NLS9780806190761","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780806190761.jpg?v=1767349930"},{"product_id":"contest-for-california-book-stephen-g-hyslop-9780806164496","title":"Contest for California","description":"California's early history was both colourful and turbulent. After Europeans first explored the region, it was conquered and colonized by successive waves of adventurers and settlers. Stephen Hyslop draws on a wide array of primary sources to weave an elegant narrative of this epic struggle for control of the territory.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52600090231057,"sku":"NLS9780806164496","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780806164496.jpg?v=1767355321"},{"product_id":"vineyards-and-vaqueros-book-george-harwood-phillips-9780806167459","title":"Vineyards and Vaqueros","description":"Indian labor was vital to the early economic development of the Los Angeles region. This first volume in the new series Before Gold: California under Spain and Mexico explores for the first time Native contributions to early Southern California.   Opening with a survey of the economic dimension of traditional southern California Indian cultures, Phillips then examines the origins and collapse of the missions, the emergence and expansion of the pueblo of Los Angeles, and the creation and decline of the ranchos. He closely considers the Indians' incorporation into these foreign-imposed institutions and the resulting impact on the region's economy and society. While concentrating on the Tongvas (Gabrielinos), Phillips also considers Indians who entered the region from the south.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.  Featuring more than two-dozen illustrations and maps, Vineyards and Vaqueros demonstrates that no history of the region is complete without a consideration of the Indian contribution.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52684093194513,"sku":"NLS9780806167459","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780806167459.jpg?v=1767356415"},{"product_id":"write-long-and-beautiful-letters-volume-9-book-rose-marie-beebe-9780806195568","title":"Write Long and Beautiful Letters Volume 9","description":"The experiences of Mexicans who were living in California when it was annexed by the United States is a crucial element of the history of the American Southwest. These Californios, as they called themselves, made California diverse and multicultural from the moment it became part of the United States.     The Vallejos of Sonoma were one of the most prominent of these Californio families. This volume explores the experiences of this family, using more than 180 letters that Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo and Francisca Benicia Carrillo de Vallejo exchanged with each other and their children between 1846 and 1888.     This correspondence offers an intimate glimpse of the ways in which this family, and many Californio families from a variety of social and economic backgrounds, struggled to adapt to the political, social, and cultural changes that accompanied American annexation. They often found themselves unwelcome strangers in the land in which they had been born. They faced changing and at times conflicting demands on their public and private lives. In the face of a hostile legal system, they struggled to maintain ownership of their property, to raise their children in an environment they did not entirely understand, and to help each other maintain their dignity and social authority in a world they had not chosen.     These letters demonstrate how the Vallejos and families like them, frequently ridiculed by the Anglos who entered California, nonetheless refused to be defined by these newcomers. Describing the creative manner of their resistance, these letters document a crucial aspect of the history of the Latino experience in California and in the greater American Southwest during the second half of the 19th century - with repercussions and relevance reaching into the present era.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53075080413457,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53075081068817,"sku":"CIN0806195568VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780806195568.jpg?v=1769692932"},{"product_id":"dancing-with-manifest-destiny-volume-10-book-daniel-b-lynch-9780806197036","title":"Dancing with Manifest Destiny Volume 10","description":"From the Mexican American War and through the Civil War Era, Mexican and US social hierarchies collided in Southern California, transforming the character of Los Angeles from Mexican-Californian to \"American.\" Influencing this transition in unexpected ways were three men of color: a Californio general turned legislator; a formerly enslaved barber; and a Mexico City-born politician and historian. In \u003ci\u003eDancing with Manifest Destiny: Elite Men of Color and the Making of American Los Angeles\u003c\/i\u003e, Daniel B. Lynch reveals how these men—Andrés Pico, Peter Biggs, and Antonio Francisco Coronel—helped shape early Los Angeles by strategically embracing and creatively amplifying the racial and masculine ideals of white settler colonialism. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Though not white Americans themselves, Pico, Biggs, and Coronel endorsed American-style white supremacy while leveraging elements of their own backgrounds that set them apart from and, in some ways, above white settlers. Lynch describes how this allowed them to establish commanding presences in three overlapping arenas: the equestrian culture of militias and vigilantism; the social world of the barbershop and demimonde; and the ideological realm of historical imagination in a layered colonial city on its way to becoming a major metropolis. While the interests of white men remained paramount in the ascendant settler city, there was room for a few elite men of color—men who did not fit the settler mold yet nonetheless represented a frontier masculinity uniquely suited to Southern California's distinctive diversity. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eDancing with Manifest Destiny\u003c\/i\u003e deftly documents how Pico, Biggs, and Coronel, standing center stage in frontier Los Angeles, maintained a surprising degree of influence amidst extremely hostile circumstances—at least for a while. The book recovers a forgotten layer in the origin story of Los Angeles, even as it offers fresh insight into entanglements of race, masculinity, and politics that persist to this day.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53346332639505,"sku":"NGR9780806197036","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53679653355793,"sku":"NLS9780806197036","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780806197036.jpg?v=1774555846"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-au\/collections\/before-gold-california-under-spain-and-mexico-series-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}