Inventing Texas: Early Historians of the Lone Star State.

Inventing Texas: Early Historians of the Lone Star State. By Laura Lyons McLemore. Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, c. 2004. Pp. [x], 130. $29.95, ISBN 1-58544-314-X.)

Historians have shown increasing interest recently in the interaction of popular myths with history. This volume explores why nineteenth-century Texas historians produced lasting myths that shaped memories of Texas's past.

Laura Lyons McLemore begins with two Spanish priests: Juan Agustin Morfi, who defended Franciscan missionaries against criticism as failed colonizers, and Jose Antonio Pichardo, who described Spanish presence in the region to offset United States claims. Their general histories of Texas were influenced by Enlightenment ideas.

A larger group of historians wrote in the 1830s and 1840s about the Texas Revolution. Shaped by a new romantic style and philosophy, these United States and European writers favored either Anglo Texans or Mexicans, usually to sell books or influence readers. While Texas was a republic in the 1840s, writers defended the new nation but sided with different political leaders. Alternative views came from an English land investor and a Mexican general who critiqued Mexican mistakes.

Southern and western ideas and more extensive research shaped the writers of the 1850s, especially Henderson Yoakum. Variations included a financial history of the Republic of Texas by William Gouge and a defense of Tejano contributions by Jose Antonio Navarro. Civil War defeat, Reconstruction debates, and Social Darwinism influenced the views of Texas-born historians in the 1860s and 1870s. Volumes on the glories of the revolution and the republic restored "a positive sense of identity" (p. 80). A more careful account of the Alamo by Reuben Potter received less attention.

From 1880 to 1900 professional historians such as George Garrison strengthened trends toward documenting and placing Texas history in the context of American history. Yet a nostalgic view of history that supported Anglo dominance with southern and western myths became stronger among professional and amateur historians. Also during these decades, women authored school texts.

The author concludes that Texas myths are part of larger traditions--such as the so-called Promised Land, privileged Protestantism, racism, individuality, and American exceptionalism--a fact that in itself undercuts the concept of Texas uniqueness. Walter Buenger, in his The Path to a Modern South: Northeast Texas between Reconstruction and the Great Depression (Austin, 2001), found Texans shifting from southern to western and national historical traditions in the early twentieth century, but McLemore sees no foreshadowing of that in the nineteenth century. Instead, she finds that romantic southern and western views of Texas history achieved dominance in the post-Civil War era.

McLemore has carefully read the published writings of numerous historians and has used their unpublished papers if available. Her well-written book is enhanced by touches of humor and irony. Its most important quality is a thoughtful analysis of major cultural and political themes and of the pragmatic influences on historians. Inventing Texas: Early Historians of the Lone Star State is a valuable contribution to the study of Texas and southern historiography and mythmaking.

ALWYN BARR 

Texas Tech University