Bowman, Timothy P. (Author)
Texas A&M University Press
Publication date: 2016
Language: English
Physical Details: 412
Blood Oranges traces the origins and legacy of racial differences between Anglo Americans and ethnic Mexicans (Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans) in the South Texas borderlands in the twentieth century. Author Tim Bowman uncovers a complex web of historical circumstances that caused ethnic Mexicans in the region to rank among the poorest, least educated, and unhealthiest demographic in the country. The key to this development, Bowman finds, was a “modern colonization movement,” a process that had its roots in the Mexican-American war of the nineteenth century but reached its culmination in the twentieth century. South Texas, in Bowman’s words, became an “internal economy just inside of the US-Mexico border.” Beginning in the twentieth century, Anglo Americans consciously transformed the region from that of a culturally “Mexican” space, with an economy based on cattle, into one dominated by commercial agriculture focused on citrus and winter vegetables. As Anglos gained political and economic control in the region, they also consolidated their power along racial lines with laws and customs not unlike the “Jim Crow” system of southern segregation. Bowman argues that the Mexican labor class was thus transformed into a marginalized racial caste, the legacy of which remained in place even as large-scale agribusiness cemented its hold on the regional economy later in the century.Blood Oranges stands to be a major contribution to the history of South Texas and borderland studies alike.
...MoreReview Linda B. Hall (2017) Review of "Blood Oranges: Colonialism and Agriculture in the South Texas Borderlands". American Historical Review (pp. 1618-1619).
Review Oliver A. Rosales (2017) Review of "Blood Oranges: Colonialism and Agriculture in the South Texas Borderlands". Journal of Southern History (pp. 450-452).
Review Kenna Lang Archer (April 2018) Review of "Blood Oranges: Colonialism and Agriculture in the South Texas Borderlands". Environmental History (pp. 403-404).
Similar Citations
Book
Andrew M. Busch;
(2017)
City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas
(/p/isis/citation/CBB970025272/)
Book
Cristina Salinas;
(2018)
Managed Migrations: Growers, Farmworkers, and Border Enforcement in the Twentieth Century
(/p/isis/citation/CBB283180505/)
Book
Henry C. Dethloff;
Stephen W. Searcy;
(2015)
Engineering Agriculture at Texas A&M: The First Hundred Years
(/p/isis/citation/CBB231611060/)
Book
Benny J. Andres;
(2015)
Power and Control in the Imperial Valley: Nature, Agribusiness, and Workers on the California Borderland, 1900-1940
(/p/isis/citation/CBB020950855/)
Book
Hamilton, Alissa;
(2009)
Squeezed: What You Didn't Know about Orange Juice
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000951641/)
Book
Manu Karuka;
(2019)
Empire's Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad
(/p/isis/citation/CBB365384229/)
Book
Higgs, Catherine;
(2012)
Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001421818/)
Book
Sarah D. Wald;
(2016)
The Nature of California: Race, Citizenship, and Farming since the Dust Bowl
(/p/isis/citation/CBB082140270/)
Book
Whayne, Jeannie M.;
(2011)
Delta Empire: Lee Wilson and the Transformation of Agriculture in the New South
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001200642/)
Article
Leedy, Todd;
(2010)
“A Starving Belly Doesn't Listen to Explanations”: Agricultural Evangelism in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1900 to 1962
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001021193/)
Article
Lynne Feeley;
(April 2019)
The Elevationists: Gerrit Smith, Black Agrarianism, and Land Reform in 1840s New York
(/p/isis/citation/CBB944344857/)
Article
Jessica Wang;
(2020)
Agricultural expertise, race, and economic development: Small producer ideology and settler colonialism in the Territory of Hawaiʻi, 1900–1917
(/p/isis/citation/CBB245206254/)
Article
Ishan Ashutosh;
(2018)
Mapping race and environment: Geography's entanglements with Aryanism
(/p/isis/citation/CBB963083718/)
Article
Anderson, Warwick;
(2013)
Racial Hybridity, Physical Anthropology, and Human Biology in the Colonial Laboratories of the United States
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001212629/)
Thesis
Manganaro, Christine Leah;
(2012)
Assimilating Hawai'i: Racial Research in a Colonial “Laboratory,” 1919--1939
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001560762/)
Article
Achim von Oppen;
(2019)
Moving Along, Moving Across, Moving in Time: Linear Geographies, Translocal Practices, and the Making of the "Barotse Boundary," ca. 1890 to 1925
(/p/isis/citation/CBB777738438/)
Book
John Williams;
Andrew Sansom;
(2016)
The Untold Story of the Lower Colorado River Authority
(/p/isis/citation/CBB248036903/)
Book
McLennan, A.D.;
(2008)
Texas & New Orleans Railroad: SP's lines in Texas and Louisiana
(/p/isis/citation/CBB655994317/)
Book
Margaret A. Bickers;
(2014)
Red Water, Black Gold: The Canadian River in Western Texas, 1920–1999
(/p/isis/citation/CBB169198155/)
Book
Miller, Char;
(2013)
On the Edge: Water, Immigration, and Politics in the Southwest
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001422402/)
Be the first to comment!