Author: Carl Solms-Braunfels
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 9781574411249
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
"Included in the Appendix are two additional important documents. First, is the diary of the colonial director of the Adelsverein, Alexander Bourgeois, who accompanied Solms until dismissed in August 1844. This record provides a unique counterpoint to Solms's viewpoint. The second is the Memoir on American Affairs, addressed to Queen Victoria. In this, written in 1845 some months after Solms's return to Germany, develops political views which were strongly influenced by Solms's stay in Texas."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Astrid Haas
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477322620
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
Every place is a product of the stories we tell about it—stories that do not merely describe but in fact shape geographic, social, and cultural spaces. Lone Star Vistas analyzes travelogues that created the idea of Texas. Focusing on the forty-year period between Mexico’s independence from Spain (1821) and the beginning of the US Civil War, Astrid Haas explores accounts by Anglo-American, Mexican, and German authors—members of the region’s three major settler populations—who recorded their journeys through Texas. They were missionaries, scientists, journalists, emigrants, emigration agents, and military officers and their spouses. They all contributed to the public image of Texas and to debates about the future of the region during a time of political and social transformation. Drawing on sources and scholarship in English, Spanish, and German, Lone Star Vistas is the first comparative study of transnational travel writing on Texas. Haas illuminates continuities and differences across the global encounter with Texas, while also highlighting how individual writers’ particular backgrounds affected their views on nature, white settlement, military engagement, Indigenous resistance, African American slavery, and Christian mission.
Author: Norman Davies
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 1846148324
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 712
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Book Description
'He writes history like nobody else. He thinks like nobody else ... He sees the world as a whole, with its limitless fund of stories' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times Where have the people in any particular place actually come from? What are the historical complexities in any particular place? This evocative historical journey around the world shows us. 'Human history is a tale not just of constant change but equally of perpetual locomotion', writes Norman Davies. Throughout the ages, men and women have endlessly sought the greener side of the hill. Their migrations, collisions, conquests and interactions have given rise to the spectacular profusion of cultures, races, languages and polities that now proliferates on every continent. This incessant restlessness inspired Davies's own. After decades of writing about European history, and like Tennyson's ageing Ulysses longing for one last adventure, he embarked upon an extended journey that took him right round the world to a score of hitherto unfamiliar countries. His aims were to test his powers of observation and to revel in the exotic, but equally to encounter history in a new way. Beneath Another Sky is partly a historian's travelogue, partly a highly engaging exploration of events and personalities that have fashioned today's world - and entirely sui generis. Davies's circumnavigation takes him to Baku, the Emirates, India, Malaysia, Mauritius, Tasmania, Tahiti, Texas, Madeira and many places in between. At every stop, he not only describes the current scene but also excavates the layers of accumulated experience that underpin the present. He tramps round ancient temples and weird museums, summarises the complexity of Indian castes, Austronesian languages and Pacific explorations, delves into the fate of indigenous peoples and of a missing Malaysian airliner, reflects on cultural conflict in Cornwall, uncovers the Nazi origins of Frankfurt airport and lectures on imperialism in a desert oasis. 'Everything has its history', he writes, 'including the history of finding one's way or of getting lost.' The personality of the author comes across strongly - wry, romantic, occasionally grumpy, but with an endless curiosity and appetite for knowledge. As always, Norman Davies watches the historical horizon as well as what is close at hand, and brilliantly complicates our view of the past.
Author: Daniel J. Gelo
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1623495946
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
Winner, 2018 Presidio La Bahia Award, sponsored by the Sons of the Republic of Texas In 1851, an article appeared in a German journal, Geographisches Jahrbuch (Geographic Yearbook), that sought to establish definitive connections, using language observations, among the Comanches, Shoshones, and Apaches. Heinrich Berghaus’s study was based on lexical data gathered by a young German settler in Texas, Emil Kriewitz, and included a groundbreaking list of Comanche words and their German translations. Berghaus also offered Kriewitz’s cultural notes on the Comanches, a discussion of the existing literature on the three tribes, and an original map of Comanche hunting grounds. Perhaps because it was published only in German, the existence of Berghaus’s study has been all but unknown to North American scholars, even though it offers valuable insights into Native American languages, toponyms, ethnonyms, hydronyms, and cultural anthropology. It was also a significant document revealing the history of German-Comanche relations in Texas. Daniel J. Gelo and Christopher J. Wickham now make available for the first time a reliable English translation of this important nineteenth-century document. In addition to making the article accessible to English speakers, they also place Berghaus’s work into historical context and provide detailed commentary on its value for anthropologists and historians who study German settlement in Texas. Comanches and Germans on the Texas Frontier will make significant contributions to multiple disciplines, opening a new lens onto Native American ethnography and ethnology.
Author: Douglas Hale
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1465315594
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 508
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Book Description
Wanderers Between Two Worlds German Rebels in the American West, 1830-1860 by Douglas Hale In the 1830s a small band of visionary university students launched an audacious, but abortive, rebellion against the German Confederation in an effort to achieve unity and freedom for their country. Their bungled revolt was quickly crushed, and the idealistic youth found themselves branded as traitors and pursued as outlaws. "Wanderers Between Two Worlds" traces the extraordinary intertwined lives of seven of the German student revolutionaries who escaped imprisonment only by flight to the American West. Leaving behind a legacy in Germany's quest for freedom that would not be fulfilled for another 150 years, these urbane and educated exiles arrived in the United States in time to share in the most dramatic episodes of the age: wilderness adventures on the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails; the Texas Revolution against Mexico; the Mexican War; the California Gold Rush; the mounting conflict over slavery; and the inexorable thrust of American power to the Pacific. The United States offered these young men a broad and uncrowded stage upon which to display their talents. Gustav Koerner became a leading Illinois politician while Georg Engelmann emerged as the premier botanist of the American West. Ferdinand Lindheimer was an influential spokesman among the German settlers in Texas. Adolph Wislizenus explored the Rockies and northern Mexico and led in the establishment of the St. Louis scientific community. Gustav Bunsen perished in the Texas Revolution, while his brother Georg achieved considerable influence as a pioneer educator. Theodor Engelmann published the first German newspaper in Illinois. Historian Douglas Hale captures the drama and adventure of their lives in both the Old Country and the New. "Wanders Between Two Worlds" is an engaging and accessible saga that acquaints readers with a long-neglected chapter in the history of German democracy and the impact of German-Americans in the development of Illinois, Missouri, and Texas. Hale combines scrupulous attention to accuracy with a lucid and readable style that ventures beyond historical narrative to engage the reader in the personalities and experiences of the individuals involved.
Author: Mike Cox
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312873868
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 520
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Book Description
Explores the history of the Texas Rangers from their origin in 1821 to protect the settlers from the Karankawa Indians, and describes how they became one of the fiercest law enforcement groups in America.
Author: Doug Dukes
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 157441819X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 645
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Book Description
From their founding in the 1820s up to the modern age, the Texas Rangers have shown the ability to adapt and survive. Part of that survival depended on their use of firearms. The evolving technology of these weapons often determined the effectiveness of these early day Rangers. John Coffee “Jack” Hays and Samuel Walker would leave their mark on the Rangers by incorporating new technology which allowed them to alter tactics when confronting their adversaries. The Frontier Battalion was created at about the same time as the Colt Peacemaker and the Winchester 73—these were the guns that “won the West.” Firearms of the Texas Rangers, with more than 180 photographs, tells the history of the Texas Rangers primarily through the use of their firearms. Author Doug Dukes narrates famous episodes in Ranger history, including Jack Hays and the Paterson, the Walker Colt, the McCulloch Colt Revolver (smuggled through the Union blockade during the Civil War), and the Frontier Battalion and their use of the Colt Peacemaker and Winchester and Sharps carbines. Readers will delight in learning of Frank Hamer’s marksmanship with his Colt Single Action Army and his Remington, along with Captain J.W. McCormick and his two .45 Colt pistols, complete with photos. Whether it was a Ranger in 1844 with his Paterson on patrol for Indians north of San Antonio, or a Ranger in 2016 with his LaRue 7.62 rifle working the Rio Grande looking for smugglers and terrorists, the technology may have changed, but the gritty job of the Rangers has not.
Author: James C. Kearney
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574412868
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
In the 1840s an organization of German noblemen, the Mainzner Adelsverein, attempted to settle thousands of German emigrants on the Texas frontier. Nassau Plantation, located near modern-day Round Top, Texas, in northern Fayette County, was a significant part of this story. No one, however, has adequately documented the role of the slave plantation or given a convincing explanation of the Adelsverein from the German point of view. James C. Kearney has studied a wealth of original source material (much of it in German) to illuminate the history of the plantation and the larger goals and motivation of the Adelsverein, both in Texas and in Germany. Moreover, this new study highlights the problematic relationship of German emigrants to slavery. Few today realize that the society's original colonization plan included ownership and operation of slave plantations. Ironically, the German settlements the society later established became hotbeds of anti-slavery and anti-secessionist sentiment. Responding to criticism in Germany, the society declared its colonies to be "slave free zones" in 1845. This act thrust the society front and center into the complicated political landscape of Texas prior to annexation. James A. Mayberry, among others, suspected an English-German conspiracy to flood the state with anti-slavery immigrants and delivered a fiery speech in the legislature denouncing the society. In the 1850s the plantation became a magnet for German immigration into Fayette and Austin Counties. In this connection, Kearney explores the role and influence of Otto von Roeder, a largely neglected but important Texas-German. Another chapter deals with the odyssey of the extended von Rosenberg family, who settled on the plantation in 1850 and helped to elevate the nearby town of Round Top into a regional center of culture and education. Many members of the family subsequently rose to positions of leadership and influence in Texas. Several notable personalities graced the plantation--Carl Prince of Solms-Braunfels, Johann Otto Freiherr von Meusebach, botanist F. Lindheimer, and the renowned naturalist Dr. Ferdinand Roemer, to name a few. Dramatic events also occurred at the plantation, including a deadly shootout, a successful escape by two slaves (documented in an unprecedented way), and litigation over ownership that wound its way to both the Texas Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Author: Daniel J. Gelo
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574419382
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Ferdinand Lindheimer was already renowned as the father of Texas botany when, in late 1852, he became the founding editor of the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung, a German-language weekly newspaper for the German settler community on the Central Texas frontier. His first year of publication was a pivotal time for the settlers and the American Indians whose territories they occupied. Based on an analysis of the paper’s first year—and drawing on methods from documentary and narrative history, ethnohistory, and literary analysis—Daniel J. Gelo and Christopher J. Wickham deliver a new chronicle of the frontier in 1853. In keeping with Lindheimer’s background as a naturalist, the natural resources available are a constant subject for reporting. One special concern is the availability and ownership of wood, so essential for building lumber, fencing, and fuel. Most dramatically, the discovery of trace amounts of gold encouraged prospecting by German and Anglo settlers, which later influenced decisions to remove Indians to reservations. The activities of the area’s Indian peoples emerge in weekly details not found in other sources. Some Lipan Apaches are killed when the army does not learn of their peaceful intentions; restitution is made at Fredericksburg. A settler named Gadt is murdered, and Tonkawas are suspected. A horse raid southeast of San Antonio is blamed on the Lipans but turns out to be the work of non-Indians in disguise. The Delawares are driven temporarily to Indian Territory. Comanche men leave their families at Fort Chadbourne to embark on a raid against the Lipans. The Penateka band of Comanches honors the peace agreement they signed with the Germans six years earlier, but their days in the region are numbered. Lindheimer enhances the reportage with lengthy features on related subjects and exerts a strong editorial voice as he seeks to influence the development of a distinctive Texas German identity. His work, explained in this new study, will appeal not only to students of Texas history and ecology, Indigenous populations, immigration, intercultural encounters, and nineteenth-century Americana, but also to general readers who enjoy the rediscovery of hidden history.
Author: Kyle B. Carpenter
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574419552
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Often obscured in the history of the nineteenth-century US-Mexico borderlands, European-born entrepreneurs played a definitive role in pushing the Rio Grande borderlands into Atlantic markets. These borderlands entrepreneurs tried to transform the Lower Rio Grande and its surroundings from a regional crossroads of trade to a hub of the Atlantic economy. Though they were often stymied by mismanagement, notions of ethnic and cultural superiority, and eruptions of violence, these entrepreneurs persistently attempted to remake the region into a modern commercial utopia. Their actions challenged United States imperial expansion into the Rio Grande borderlands as they tried to modernize the region according to European cultural precepts through constructing colonies populated with Europeans, building strong networks of local and global significance, and striving to dominate trade in the region. Globalizing the Lower Rio Grande reframes the narrative of the borderlands through the perspectives of Europeans who actively shaped the historical trajectory of the region. It highlights the actions of folks like English-born John C. Beales, who convinced a party of Europeans to trek overseas and overland to the isolated Las Moras Creek to build a colony from scratch; Alexander Bourgeois d’Orvanne, former mayor of Clichy-la-Garenne in France, who manipulated powerful French and German leaders to support a settlement scheme on the Rio Grande; Spanish-born José San Román and the way he constructed massive transatlantic networks of credit and exchange; and Joseph Kleiber from Strasbourg, who facilitated the construction of a European-owned railroad line along the Rio Grande. Though ultimately undermined and outmaneuvered by their American rivals, European-born borderlands entrepreneurs like these collectively globalized the Lower Rio Grande.
