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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Globalizing The Rio Grande: European-Born Entrepreneurs, Settlement, And Mercantile Networks In The Rio Grande Borderlands, 1749-1881, Kyle B. Carpenter
Globalizing The Rio Grande: European-Born Entrepreneurs, Settlement, And Mercantile Networks In The Rio Grande Borderlands, 1749-1881, Kyle B. Carpenter
History Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation argues that the borderland region from the Nueces River to the Sierra Madres has been a crossroads of trade since the era of Spanish colonization, and that after Mexico won its independence from Spain, the region became the focus of intense commercial modernization projects initiated by both state agents and individual businessmen from all over Western Europe. These entrepreneurs wanted to transform the Rio Grande and its surroundings from a regional crossroads to a hub of the Atlantic economy. However, their efforts to create rapid change were often stymied by mismanagement, notions of ethnic and cultural superiority, and …