California's Pobladores: Settlement and Community along the Spanish Frontier, 1769-1850

FAIN: FEL-262934-19

Steven W. Hackel
Regents of the University of California, Riverside (Riverside, CA 92521-0001)

Research and writing leading to the publication of a book about early settlers to California.

Today, California is home to more than 39,000,000 people, 40 percent of whom are Latinos with ancestral roots in Mexico or Central America. California’s southern border, the movement of Mexican and Central American immigrants into California, and their place in our nation, are among the most charged political issues of our time. Yet, the history of the earliest Mexican immigration to California has never been studied in a rigorous manner, and thus the colonial history of our nation’s most populous and diverse state remains incomplete. This project, California’s Pobladores, seeks to uncover the lost histories of the first Mexican settlers to California and place their experiences within the context of other settler communities across colonial America. In so doing, California’s Pobladores will contribute importantly to the expansion of the boundaries of early American history and further the writing of an American colonial history that is continental in scope and comparative in vision.