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Full Description
The Limits of Liberty chronicles the formation of the U.S.-Mexico border from the perspective of the "mobile peoples" who assisted in determining the international boundary from both sides in the mid-nineteenth century. In this historic and timely study, James David Nichols argues against the many top-down connotations that borders carry, noting that the state cannot entirely dominate the process of boundary marking. Even though there were many efforts on the part of the United States and Mexico to define the new international border as a limit, mobile peoples continued to transgress the border and cross it with impunity.
Transborder migrants reimagined the dividing line as a gateway to opportunity rather than as a fence limiting their movement. Runaway slaves, Mexican debt peones, and seminomadic Native Americans saw liberty on the other side of the line and crossed in search of greater opportunity. In doing so they devised their own border epistemology that clashed with official understandings of the boundary. These divergent understandings resulted in violence with the crossing of vigilantes, soldiers, and militias in search of fugitives and runaways.
The Limits of Liberty explores how the border attracted migrants from both sides and considers border-crossers together, whereas most treatments thus far have considered discrete social groups along the border. Mining Mexican archival sources, Nichols is one of the first scholars to explore the nuance of negotiation that took place between the state and mobile peoples in the formation of borders.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
"A Country in Which He Could Acquire Liberty":
The Making of Borderlands Mobility
Chapter 1
"La Frontera del Norte:" Lipan Apaches and the Troubled Rise of Mexico in the Borderlands
Chapter 2
Racial Fault Lines: Immigrant Indians in Mexico
Chapter 3
"Impatient for the Promised Freedom":
Runaway Slaves in the Age of the Texan Revolution
Chapter 4
"A Great System of Roaming:"
Runaway Debt Peons and the Making of the International Border
Chapter 5
Warriors in Want: Immigrant Tribes and Borderlands Insecurity
Chapter 6
The Line of Liberty:
Runaway Slaves after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Chapter 7
Bordering on the Illicit:
Violence and the Making of the International Line
Chapter 8
"Not Even Seeming Friendship":
Lipan Apaches and the Promises and Perils of Play-off Diplomacy
Chapter 9
Sacrificed on the Altar of Liberty:
Regionalism and Cooperation in the Age of Vidaurri
Conclusion
Mobility Uninterrupted: The Limits of Liberty
Bibliography
Notes
Index
