| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

From Settler to Citizen: New Mexican Economic Development and the Creation of Vecino Society, 1750–1820. By Ross Frank. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. xxiv, 329 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-520-22206-7.)

One of the most vexing topics in Mexican American history remains the ubiquitous "Spanish" identity claimed by so many New Mexicans, often described as a "fantasy heritage" or a "false consciousness." Little is known about the claim's origins, evolution, or significance in the context of conquest and economic change. Now comes a study that dares to probe the murky and contentious waters of Hispanic ethnogenesis in New Mexico. 1

In From Settler to Citizen, Ross Frank tells a complex tale of economic and cultural transformation on New Spain's northern frontier. He contends that a vecino society took form in a caldron of social relations and economic development. The Bourbon reforms that drew New Mexico further into Spain's colonial trade network in the latter years of the eighteenth century and the restoration of calm after decades of depredation by nonsedentary Indians combined to bring a degree of prosperity to the region. That prosperity, Frank writes, enabled vecinos ("non-Indians") to enhance and reaffirm their dominant position vis-à-vis their Pueblo Indian neighbors. . . .

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