Often obscured in the history of the nineteenth-century US-Mexico borderlands, European-born entrepreneurs played a definitive role in pushing the Lower Rio Grande borderlands into Atlantic markets. Though they were often stymied by mismanagement, notions of ethnic and cultural superiority, and eruptions of violence, these entrepreneurs persistently attempted to remake the region into a modern commercial utopia. Globalizing the Lower Rio Grande highlights the actions of folks like English-born John C. Beales, who convinced a party of Europeans to trek to the isolated Las Moras Creek to build a colony from scratch; Alexander Bourgeois d'Orvanne, who manipulated powerful French and German leaders to support a settlement scheme on the Rio Grande; Spanish-born JosE San RomAn and the way he constructed massive transatlantic networks of credit and exchange; and Joseph Kleiber from Strasbourg, who facilitated the construction of a European-owned railroad line along the Rio Grande.
Kyle B. Carpenter is the associate vice chancellor of academic affairs at the University of Arkansas Rich Mountain in Mena, Arkansas. He has written articles for Southwestern Historical Quarterly and the Journal of South Texas.
"The Rio Grande borderlands may seem like an unlikely El Dorado, but that is how it once appeared to many Europeans. In Globalizing the Lower Rio Grande, Kyle Carpenter tells this long-neglected story, arguing convincingly that the economic development of the region owed much to Europeans investors and entrepreneurs. Well-written and deeply researched, Carpenter's book is a splendid and indispensable addition to the literature on the Rio Grande Valley."--Sam W. Haynes, author of Unsettled Land: From Revolution to Republic, the Struggle for Texas "I found this work to be engaging, well crafted, and competently researched. Carpenter's dramatic retelling of the Beales Colony disaster on Las Moras Creek is particularly engaging. His research into such individuals as Jose San Roman and John Z. Leyendecker is impressive."--Jerry Thompson, author of Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas and Tejano Tiger: Jose de los Santos Benavides and the History of the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1823-1891 "This is an important and understudied subject, and this book fills a gap in the existing literature. It is a work of competent scholarship that makes a key contribution to the field. A book about the role of Europeans is an important addition to the literature because so much of the historical material on the region emphasizes Spaniards, Mexicans, Tejanos, and Anglo Americans and rarely acknowledges the full diversity of people who came to the region to seek their fortunes."--Alicia M. Dewey, author of Pesos and Dollars: Entrepreneurs in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1880-1940
