Quartermasters of Conquest

The Mexican-American War and the Making of South Texas
The Mexican-American War, 1846–1848, resulted in the largest militaristic land acquisition in American history. It also, as Christopher Menking contends in this book, shaped the distribution of power and wealth in South Texas in profound ways that still resonate throughout the region’s political and economic landscape. The US Army Quartermaster Department oversaw the logistical war effort, which continued to operate a new chain of forts and depots along the southern and western boundary with territories controlled by Native Americans after the war ended. In Quartermasters of Conquest Menking explores the Quartermaster Department’s critical but generally unappreciated functions—its wartime support of three separate armies in the field and its long-term, consequential operations in the decade after the war.

In a detailed account of the Quartermaster Department’s methods, Menking describes how the Army imported Anglo labor to the area north of the Rio Grande, then sparsely populated by Tejanos and Mexicans. This Anglo influx, along with river transportation and supply contractors, ultimately altered the demographics of the region—and, Menking suggests, contributed to the growth of new Texas towns and cities, as satellite communities grew alongside the forts, dramatically shifting the urban geography and economic power across the Rio Grande. Combining analysis of wartime logistics with insight into the divergent military and social histories of the lower Rio Grande borderland, Quartermasters of Conquest demonstrates the lasting influence of the Quartermaster Department on South Texas during the mid-nineteenth century—and the wartime roots of Anglos’ political dominance despite being an ethnic minority in the region.

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