The Mexican-American War

Melvyn and guests discuss the 1846-48 conflict after which the United States of Mexico lost half its territory to the United States of America. The US gained land covered by the states of Texas, Utah, California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and part of Colorado. The outcome had a profound impact on Native Americans and led to civil war in defeated Mexico. It also raised the question of whether slavery would be legal in this acquired territory - something that would only be resolved in the US Civil War, which this victory hastened.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Frank Cogliano 5 episodes
  Professor of American History at the University of Edinburgh
• Jacqueline Fear-Segal 3 episodes
  Professor of American and Indigenous Histories at the University of East Anglia
• Thomas Rath No other episodes
  Lecturer in Latin American History at University College London

Reading list

• Sleuthing the Alamo
  James E. Crisp (Oxford University Press, 2004) Google Books →
• War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War
  Brian DeLay (Yale University Press, 2009) Google Books →
• Santa Anna of Mexico
  Will Fowler (University of Nebraska Press, 2008) Google Books →
• A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico
  Amy Greenberg (Vintage, 2013) Google Books →
• The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War
  Peter Guardino (Harvard University Press, 2017) Google Books →
• Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
  S. C. Gwynne (Constable, 2011) Google Books →
• The Comanche Empire: A Study of Indigenous Power, 1700-1875
  Pekka Hamalainen (Yale University Press, 2009)
• What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848
  Daniel Walker Howe (Oxford University Press, 2009) Google Books →
• A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent
  Robert W. Merry (Simon & Schuster, 2010) Google Books →
• Civil Disobedience
  Henry David Thoreau (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014) Google Books →

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  22 Apr, 2021 900 History

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Programme ID: b0b7d18j

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7d18j

Auto-category: 973 (United States)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, in 1848 Mexico lost a war with the United States of America.