Recuerdos : Historical and Personal Remembrances Relating to Alta California, 1769 1849 (2 Volume Set)

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo

ISBN 10: 0806190779 / ISBN 13: 9780806190778

Published by University Of Oklahoma Press Mär 2023, 2023

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Recuerdos : Historical and Personal Remembrances Relating to Alta California, 1769 1849 (2 Volume Set)
• Publisher: University Of Oklahoma Press Mär 2023
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0806190779
• ISBN 13: 9780806190778
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 248W x 166H x 107D millimeters 248 millimeters width by 166 millimeters height by 107 millimeters depth
• Weight: 2932 grams

About this title

Synopsis

A generation after the U.S. conquest of California, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo set out to write the story of the land he knew so well—a history to dispel the romantic vision quickly overtaking the state’s recent past. The five-volume history he produced, published here for the first time in English translation, is the most complete account of California before the gold rush by someone who resided in California at the time.

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, such as the Monterey Constitutional Convention and the first legislature. With his project, undertaken for historian and publisher Hubert Howe Bancroft, Vallejo sought to correct misrepresentations of California’s past, which dismissed as insignificant the pre–gold rush Spanish and Mexican periods—conflated into one “Mission era.”

Instead, Vallejo’s history emphasized the role of the military in the Spanish colonization of California and argued that the missionaries after Junípero Serra, with their medieval ideas, had actually retarded the development of California until secularization in the early 1830s. Culture, he contended, was of intense interest to the Californio people, as was the education of children. His accounts of Indigenous peoples, while often sympathetic, were also characteristic of his time: he and other California military leaders, Vallejo maintained, had successfully subdued “hostile” Indians and established mutually beneficial relationships with others.

Out of keeping with Bancroft’s American triumphalism, Vallejo’s monumental project was consigned to the archives. With their deft translation and commentary, Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz—authors of a companion volume on Vallejo’s work—have brought to light a remarkable perspective, often firsthand, on important events in early California history. Their efforts restore a critical chapter to the story of California and the American West.
 

About the Authors

Rose Marie Beebe is Professor Emerita of Spanish Literature at Santa Clara University.

Robert M. Senkewicz is Professor Emeritus of History at Santa Clara University. Beebe and Senkewicz are the coauthors of Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary.