Silver Mines and Mobile Miners in the Southwestern Borderlands of the Qing Empire

This article explores mining as the motor of temporary and permanent migration into the Far Southwest of Ming and Qing China. It focuses on the workforce of borderland silver mines, specifically on travel routes and the geography of recruitment. Durations and costs of the journeys reflect the existence of efficiently organized networks. The men who set out for the mines did so in the expectation of making money and returning home with handsome gains. This provides insights into the sizeable and profitable non-agrarian sector in the late imperial economy.

Los Desaparecidos in the Gulf Coast and Early Texas Borderlands

This chapter highlights the experiences of those who disappeared or went missing on the southwestern borderlands in early Texas. Examined from the human angle of loss, the stories in the early Spanish narratives highlight the intense magnitude of destruction on these emergent borderlands, matching the dramatic numbers. A fresh look from this perspective also helps to insert Cabeza de Vaca’s account where it belongs—in the middle—as a connected series of entries into La Florida, some of which pushed west into Texas. Not just a miraculous “survivor,” the Spanish conquistador engaged in violent acts that mimicked previous conquistas; he also provided a model for others to follow as disappearances came to mark the borderlands for Spaniards and Indians alike. It also reminds readers that the possibility—even likelihood—of disappearance loomed over all of the colonial enterprise.

Children of Rus’: From the Little Russian Idea to the Russian World

This is a review of a book that traces the rise of Russian nationalism in Russia’s “southwestern borderlands” during the long 19th century. What gave rise to it was the so-called “Little Russian idea” that emphasized the existence of the Russian Orthodox organic nation that had originated in the right bank of the Dnieper. The elements of that idea survived well into the 20th century.