Spanish Texas

Flag Spanish overseas empire. The failure of the French colony became known throughout the world. One year after the incident, the Spanish entered Texas, eager to keep the French in Louisiana, far from the wealth of New Spain. Texas became an important buffer zone but sparsely populated between the claims of the powers of France and Spain. The Spanish Texas lasted from 1690 to 1821 when Texas was governed as a Spanish colony separate from New Spain, known as the “Kingdom of Texas.” This period begins with the expion of the governor of Coahuila to destroy the ruins of the French colony of Fort Saint Louis and establish a Spanish presence in the area, and ends with the independence of Mexico in 1821, creating the Texas Mexican.During this period, Texas was part of four provinces in the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Colonial Mexico): the El Paso area was under the jurisdiction of New Mexico, the missions founded near La Junta de los Rios under Nueva Vizcaya , the coastal region from the Nueces River to the Rio Grande and thence upstream to Laredo under the jurisdiction of Nuevo Santander after 1749, and Texas was initially under joint jurisdiction with the province of Coahuila. Little more than three centuries elapsed between the time when the Texas coast was first seen by a Spanish in 1519 and 21 July 1821, when the flag of Castile and Leon was raised recently in San Antonio.Those 300 years can be divided into three stages: the initial era of exploration, which had a preliminary assessment of the land and its resources, the period of cultural absorption, in which the Indians of Texas began acquiring cultural elements Spain, at first indirectly and then directly intermediaries Indians of the Spanish itself, and the time of occupation defensive, in which the Spanish presence in Texas was more dictated by international considerations that caused by the momentum of an empire expansion. For most of the period of Spanish Texas, the area became a geopolitical importance vastly disproportionate to their demographic or economic place in the Spanish Empire. During the early period of Spanish expansion in Texas, the Empire began to establish a series of missions to establish a toehold in this land border.Because the Texans environments were relatively unknown or not studied beyond the reports made during the earlier conqueror, the Spanish expansion served both in delineating the extent of his power to colonize the area. A mission-presidio system was established in the existing areas of San Antonio Bay, Los Adaes, El Paso, Loredao, Nagodoches and San Luis de las Amarillas. The initial expansion in the early eighteenth century met with immediate setback when, during the War of the Quadruple Alliance in Europe hostilities spread to the New World and French troops from Natchitoches (Louisiana) briefly captured the capital of Texas, The Adaes, in what is now northwestern Louisiana. After these drawbacks, the Presidio was San Luis de las Amarillas, though strengthened and maintained for several years, had to be abandoned in 1770 due to Indian depredations and economic viability.Thus, Spanish efforts to expand in Texas during the years 1731 to 1762 failed, except at La Bahia, San Antonio de Bexar, and along the Rio Grande. Missions and prisons, nevertheless, had clearly failed north of San Antonio. The Spanish Texas was established on three primary centers. The oldest and largest of the colonial communities in Texas was San Antonio de Bexar. In his eighty-year history of the settlement had evolved a complex mission-presidio the first municipality mapping and finally to the provincial capital. Its population of about 2,000 people was mostly Mexican settlers of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and other border provinces mixed with a small number of people from the Canary Islands.After the United States acquired Louisiana, a strengthening of the Spanish military presence in Texas resulted in the transfer of the Second Company of San Carlos de Parras (the company of the Alamo de Parras) to San Antonio, which was established in 1803 in the mission San Antonio de Valero, which had previously been closed. Other units from Nuevo Santander and Nuevo Leon population increased to more than 3,000 inhabitants by 1810. The secondary center of Spanish colonial power, La Bahia (now Goliad), was the second oldest settlement in the province.

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