STUDY QUESTIONS

CALIFORNIA:  AN INTERPRETIVE HISTORY (8th Ed.)

CHAPTER 5  -  A MARGINAL PROVINCE OF A TROUBLED REPUBLIC

1. How would you contrast the idealistic rhetoric of the Mexican constitution and the reality of Mexican society?

2. What did Mexico's liberal Constitution of 1824 lead to?

3. What was the status of California under Mexico?  What powers were assigned to the governors?

4. Where did real political/social power lay in California and what were the motives of this oligarchy?

5. What were the consequences to "government by mock revolution?"

6. Why were the Spanish government's attempt to secularize the missions in 1749 abandoned?  Why were the missions later targets for Mexican revolutionary nationalists?

7. What is the difference between a criollo (creole) and a gachupine?

8. Why does the text agree with the padres that the mission Indians were not ready for secularization?

9. Explain "strategies of offensive resistance" on the part of California's Native Americans.

10. When a secularization law was finally adopted by the Mexican Congress, half of the mission lands were to be parceled to the Indians who were prohibited by law from disposing of it.  What actually happened?

11. What happened to the Indians at the mission churches after secularization?

12. What were the factors that contributed to the weakening of California politically on the eve of the Mexican American War?

13. Where were most of the ranchos located?  Why would determining Californio land grants in American courts become so difficult?

14. What was the impression of foreign visitors in regards to Californios?

15. Why should we call California rancho society feudal?

16. What did the abundance of cheap Indian labor allow for rancheros?

17. What was the state of education in Mexican California?

18. What was California's population in 1845?  How many native Californians were literate?

Key Names, Terms, and Concepts