1. Incorporating Mexicans into the American West, 1820-60
1) The Significance of America’s Absorption of Mexico,
2) Mexico and America’s Borderland Prior to the 1840s
a) Fur Trade—a world of racial and ethnic accommodation
b) No single European or American nation dominated
3) The Processes of Annexation, Conquest, and Purchase:
The U.S. Acquires Mexican Territory and Mexican Peoples
Mexican Attempts to Overcome Weak Rule—Texas
Increasing U.S. Expansiveness—Texas, California, SW
Annexing Texas, Conquering the Southwest
White Americans Perceive Mexicans as Inferior
The Question of Mexican Citizenship in the U.S. under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848: What Happened to the
Rights of Mexicans?

2. Mexico and the U.S., 1821
The Northwest was jointly occupied by the U.S. & Britain. More broadly, Native peoples remained sovereign in large swaths of northern Mexico and the western U.S.

3. The Impact of America’s War with Mexico, 1846-48:
A Huge Shift in North America’s Balance of Power
In 1821, the U.S. and Mexico were comparable in area (1.8 million square miles vs. 1.7 million square miles). And they were not that far apart in population (9.6 million in U.S. vs. approximately 6.5 million in Mexico).
Due to the War with Mexico, as well as the annexation of Texas and the Gadsden Purchase, by the early 1850s the U.S. had acquired more than 1 million square miles of what had been Mexican territory. The U.S. had also absorbed perhaps less than 100,000 people who had previously been Mexican citizens. Yet by 1850, due to immigration and rapid “natural” population growth, mostly in the eastern states, the U.S. population outnumbered Mexico’s by 23 million to 7.75 million.

4. Mexico, 1821

5. “Manifest Destiny”: The U.S. Extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific

6. Texas Achieves Independence, 1836

8. Mexicans in Gold Rush California: a vaquero, a Californio couple, miners panning for gold, and notice that the “bandit” Joaquin Murietta’s head was on display. These images reflected white Americans’ sense of superiority, and the perception that Mexicans were colorful but not prepared to be self-governing.

9. Mexican Railroad Labor, Texas

10. Mexican Railroad Workers, Kansas