Texas in Turmoil: Mapping Interethnic Violence, 1821-79

By the early decades of the nineteenth century, Texas had become one of the most ethnically and racially diverse regions in North America. With this diversity came a wide range of ethnic violence committed against people of all types of backgrounds. Join us for a discussion with Dr. Sam Haynes of the University of Texas Arlington. This project seeks to map incidents of fatal and near-fatal violence among the region’s many ethnic and racial groups over the course of more than half a century, from the birth of the Mexican republic in the early 1820s to the end of Reconstruction and the so-called “Indian Wars.” While some conflicts, such as the Texas struggle for independence, are well known, the collision of cultures took many forms. Clashes involving state actors–the formally recognized military forces of Mexico, Texas, and the United States— were only a small part of the broader pattern of violence in which the region’s inhabitants competed for economic resources, land, and political control.

Sam W. Haynes is a professor in the UTA Department of History and has served as director of the Center for Greater Southwestern Studies since 2009. Specializing in 19th-century US and Texas, he is the author of four books. His most recent work, Unsettled Land: From Revolution to Republic, The Struggle for Texas (Basic Books, 2022) has won four book prizes and was listed as one of Foreign Affairs’ Best Books of 2022. As Center Director, Haynes also oversees “A Continent Divided: the U.S.-Mexico War,” a website that seeks to digitize the extensive Mexican War holdings in the UTA Library’s Special Collections. Haynes is an elected member of the Texas Institute of Letters and an elected fellow of the Texas State Historical Association.