Broadcloth and Britches: The Santa Fe Trade

CONNOR, Seymour V. & Skaggs. Jimmy M.

ISBN 10: 0890961913 / ISBN 13: 9780890961919

Published by Texas, A & M University Press, 1st edn, 1977

About this Item

225 pages, with 12 pages of plates and 4 maps, a VG+ paperback [0890961913].

Seller Inventory # 67664

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Broadcloth and Britches: The Santa Fe Trade
• Publisher: Texas, A & M University Press, 1st edn
• Publication Date: 1977
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0890961913
• ISBN 13: 9780890961919
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Hundreds of miles from its supply center in Chihuahua and just freed from the grip of Spain's mercantilist colonial policies, New Mexico was ripe for foreign commerce when the first of the Missouri traders arrived in Santa Fe in 1821. For the next forty years trade flourished between Americans hawking anything that would sell, often at incredible profit, and New Mexican buyers hungry for all types of manufactured goods. But the frontier moved inevitably westward, goods became more readily available and consequently less expensive, and the railroad at last replaced the mulewhackers who had long plied the Santa Fe Trail.

Broadcloth and Britches is the first account to synthesize an abundance of primary source material--the reminiscences of traders, the impressions of journalists and soldiers, the unpublished manuscripts of both literate and semiliterate observers--and serious scholarly journal articles and monographs of the Santa Fe Trail and trade. In this detailed and lively narrative, the authors trace the origins, development, and decline of the trade: the early expeditions; the route and its hazards; transport, financing, and profits; the effects of complex political shifts in Spain, Mexico, Texas, and the United States; and the economic consequences of increasingly efficient supply to a relatively fixed market.