Leonard Pitt
Decline of the Californios
A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890
$21.95, £12.95 paperback
978-0-520-21958-8
Available Now
340 pages, 42 b/w photographs
June 1999, Available worldwide
Categories: History; Californian & Western History; Native American Ethnicity
June 1999, Available worldwide
Categories: History; Californian & Western History; Native American Ethnicity
"Extensively documented, the book has a lively, anecdotal style that brings many a forgotten character and incident back to life."—Fernando Penalosa, Library Journal
"A must for historians interested in the period as well as those wishing lively and interesting reading."—Rudolph F. Acuna, California Historical Society Quarterly
"Pitt's fine monograph is therefore a novelty, for it is the work of a California historian knowledgeable in his state's history and sufficiently adventurous to enter upon unfamiliar ground. This book's major claim to originality is in the link that the author establishes between the bleak prospects of today's over 2 million Spanish-speaking Californians and the misfortunes of the 10,000 nineteenth-century Californios. 'The modern predicament of the Mexican-American jelled a century ago, from 1849 to 1885, and not after the turn of the century, as some suppose.'"—Moses Rischin, American Historical Review
"Focuses on the circumstances that caused the native-born Californians, or Californios, to lose numerical supremacy, land, political influence, and cultural dominance, and become a disadvantaged social group. It is the story of the decline but no less of the . . . perseverance of a subgroup which in the twentieth century was transformed into the largest minority in the Far West--the Mexican-Americans."—Choice
"A must for historians interested in the period as well as those wishing lively and interesting reading."—Rudolph F. Acuna, California Historical Society Quarterly
"Pitt's fine monograph is therefore a novelty, for it is the work of a California historian knowledgeable in his state's history and sufficiently adventurous to enter upon unfamiliar ground. This book's major claim to originality is in the link that the author establishes between the bleak prospects of today's over 2 million Spanish-speaking Californians and the misfortunes of the 10,000 nineteenth-century Californios. 'The modern predicament of the Mexican-American jelled a century ago, from 1849 to 1885, and not after the turn of the century, as some suppose.'"—Moses Rischin, American Historical Review
"Focuses on the circumstances that caused the native-born Californians, or Californios, to lose numerical supremacy, land, political influence, and cultural dominance, and become a disadvantaged social group. It is the story of the decline but no less of the . . . perseverance of a subgroup which in the twentieth century was transformed into the largest minority in the Far West--the Mexican-Americans."—Choice
"Decline of the Californios is one of those rare works that first gained fame for its pathbreaking and original nature, but which now maintains its status as a classic of California and ethnic history."—Douglas Monroy, author of Thrown among Strangers
In his enduring study of Spanish-speaking Californians—a group that includes both native-born Californians, or Californios, and immigrants from Mexico—Leonard Pitt charts one of the earliest chapters in the state's ethnic history, and, in the process, he sheds light on debates and tensions that continue to this day. In a new foreword for this edition, Ramón A. Gutiérrez discusses the shaping and reception of the book and also views this classic work in light of recent scholarship on California and ethnic history.
Martin Ridge Retrospective Award, Historical Society of Southern California