Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.2 | The History Cooperative

Juan Alvarado: Governor of California, 1836-1842. By Robert Ryal Miller. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. xiv, 216 pp. $29.95, isbn 0-8061-3077-6.)

Tumultuous is a word often used to describe California politics in the Mexican period (1821-1846), and with good reason. Feuds, vituperation, and even revolts were the norm. Born into this political culture, Juan Bautista Alvarado often occupied center stage of these exasperating dramas. These were important times in California's history: the Yankees were arriving, and the hide and tallow trade with New England was accelerating; the missions were being secularized (that is, it was the end of evangelizing the Indians and the start of the distribution of the missions' huge landholdings), and the emerging ranchero elite was replacing the friars in importance; and many of the former mission Indians, along with some who never Christianized, labored on the new ranchos, while others of them terrorized the Californios with their frequent raids. California's first native-born governor, Alvarado led his people with what Robert Ryal Miller calls a combination of talent and grace, on the one hand, and lapses in judgment and a predilection for alcohol, on the other. . . .

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