University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2019 How California Was Won: Race, Citizenship, And The Colonial Roots Of California, 1846 – 1879 Camille Alexandrite Suárez University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Suárez, Camille Alexandrite, "How California Was Won: Race, Citizenship, And The Colonial Roots Of California, 1846 – 1879" (2019). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 3491. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3491 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3491 For more information, please contact [email protected]. How California Was Won: Race, Citizenship, And The Colonial Roots Of California, 1846 – 1879 Abstract The construction of California as an American state was a colonial project premised upon Indigenous removal, state-supported land dispossession, the perpetuation of unfree labor systems and legal, race- based discrimination alongside successful Anglo-American settlement. This dissertation, entitled “How the West was Won: Race, Citizenship, and the Colonial Roots of California, 1849 - 1879” argues that the incorporation of California and its diverse peoples into the U.S. depended on processes of colonization that produced and justified an adaptable acialr hierarchy that protected white privilege and supported a racially-exclusive conception of citizenship. In the first section, I trace how the California Constitution and federal and state legislation violated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This legal system empowered Anglo-American migrants seeking territorial, political, and economic control of the region by allowing for the dispossession of Californio and Indigenous communities and legal discrimination against Californio, Indigenous, Black, and Chinese persons. The second section of the dissertation focuses on the implementation and obstruction of a Free State status and the process of Reconstruction within the state. This project concludes with an exploration of the rewriting of the California Constitution in 1879. While the 1849 Constitution established American sovereignty by excluding Californios, Indigenous Peoples, and Black Americans from California society, the 1879 Constitution maintained the colonial project and protected white-only citizenship, by providing mechanisms to manage the “imported colonialism” created by the demand for cheap labor and a growing American empire. In California, the construction of the American state depended on the racialization, dehumanization, and criminalization of Californio, Indigenous, Chinese and Black people that ultimately rendered them unworthy of inhabiting the land as citizens. The colonial process that transformed the frontier from a contested Mexican space into an American state, not only structured California society, but also shaped U.S. society, American imperialism in the Pacific orld,W and U.S. immigration policy in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group History First Advisor Mary F. Berry Keywords 19th century, California, Californios, colonialism, Indigenous Peoples, land Subject Categories History This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3491 HOW CALIFORNIA WAS WON: RACE, CITIZENSHIP, AND THE COLONIAL ROOTS OF CALIFORNIA, 1846 – 1879 Camille A. Suárez A DISSERTATION in History Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2019 Supervisor of Dissertation ______________ Mary Frances Berry Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and History Graduate Group Chairperson _________________ Benjamin Nathans, Associate Professor of History Dissertation Committee: Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought & History Eiichiro Azuma, Alan Charles Kors Term Associate Professor of History Stephanie McCurry, R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History Andrés Reséndez, Professor of History HOW CALIFORNIA WAS WON: RACE, CITIZENSHIP, AND THE COLONIAL ROOTS OF CALIFORNIA, 1846 – 1879 COPYRIGHT 2019 Camille Alexandrite Suarez This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ For my Mother, Gloria Acknowledgment The thinking, researching, and writing of a dissertation project is a solitary project that requires the support and encouragement of many. I am fortunate to have had the support of people from Philadelphia, France, and, yes, California. I take great pleasure in finally thanking all the people that made this dissertation project possible. This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, Gloria Ramirez. It is impossible to put into words all that my mother has done for me, but I will attempt to give her the thanks she deserves. Since I was a young child, my mother encouraged me to quench my thirst for knowledge; she spent endless hours taking me to libraries, museums, and punk concerts. Thank you, Mom. She was the smart and strong example that made clear to me that I could pursue my dreams. My mother not only selflessly gives the love that sustains me, but also the encouragement that inspired me to be the first kid from our family to leave California and pursue an education at institutions that were not created with me in mind. As I added the finishing touches to this dissertation, I often thought back to the problematic California Missions project I was assigned in the fourth grade. It was my mother’s encouragement that inspired me to learn and understand the history of the San Gabriel Mission and create a Mission model that was accurate, well-researched, and told a story. Again, almost twenty years later, my mother’s support and love inspired me as I pursued and completed this California project. For everything, I am grateful. My little sister, Hailey Suárez, has been my guiding light since she came into this world. She has taught me the patience and compassion that I rely on as a teacher. This iv journey could have not been completed without her and was pursued with her in mind. I know you find History boring, but I hope this historian made you proud. To my entire family – Grandma, Grandpa, Jessie, Charlie, Noni, Isabel, Jimmy, Erika, David, Patricia, and RaeAnne – thank you for your endless love and support. I think part of me picked this dissertation project as a way to understand where we came from. While this project did not answer that question, I have always known where I come from. To the newest member of our family, Madelyn Ella Long, thank you for reminding us about what is most important. Thank you to my new family – John, Michelle, Marie, and Tianyu. Your support was not required, but greatly appreciated. I am deeply grateful to Mary Frances Berry, my dissertation advisor. I am honored to have worked with such a tour de force. Since she welcomed me to Penn in 2013, she has provided invaluable support and advice. She did not question my second- year decision to write a dissertation on California. Instead she encouraged me to be bold and rigorous with my scholarship, and for this, I am thankful. I cherish our many conversations and hope they continue for years to come. In addition to having had Stephanie McCurry as a supportive committee member, I was fortunate enough to have taken three seminars with her. These three seminars left indelible marks on this dissertation and my intellectual journey. Stephanie is one of the best graduate seminar leaders and the conversations she engineered in the classroom have fueled this dissertation and the way I think about, research, and write history. I am lucky to have had the opportunity to work with such an intellectual powerhouse. I am thankful to Eiichiro Azuma for agreeing to conduct an independent study with me after our first meeting. It was the beginning of a fruitful intellectual exchange; v one that I hope has not come to an end. I have learned so much from him and am fortunate to have worked with a scholar whose work is an example to emulate. My road to Penn traversed through Indiana as well as California. A special thank you to Andrés Reséndez for serving as a thoughtful and encouraging member of the committee all the way from the Golden State. As an undergraduate at Notre Dame University, I was fortunate to have teachers that became mentors. Thank you to Richard Pierce, Karen Richman, John Deak, Gail Bederman, and Rebecca McKenna. While he never formally taught me, thank you to Arnel Bulaoro for demonstrating what good and effective mentorship looks like. And thank you, Mr. Mullarkey, for always believing in my writing. Thank you to all the archivists that helped this project come into being; especially, John Cahoon and Elena Smith. At the University of Pennsylvania, I have been fortunate to work with and befriend many wonderful people. Thank you to Joan Plonski, Octavia Carr, Bekah Rosenberg, and Taylor Baciocco for making the bureaucratic aspect of graduate school manageable, if not invisible, and for the candy that sustained the myriad days of procrastinating, reading, and writing. A very special thank you to Helen Pho for helping make my sixth year sucessful. I am thankful to have engaged with many brilliant scholars while at Penn. My thinking has been shaped by conversations had with Heather Williams, Kathy Brown, Amy Offner, Kathy Peiss, Sarah Gronningsater, Dan Richter, Sophia Rosenfield, Camille Charles, Lee Casselini, Benjamin Nathans, Antonio Feros, and Barbara Savage. While I am not sure that he remembers the small interaction, a huge thank you to Cheikh Babou for putting into words an idea I could not articulate. A very vi special thank you is afforded to Eve Troutt Powell for making clear from day one that I belonged at Penn and for providing endless intellectual inspiration. Surviving six years as a graduate student would have been impossible without friends to write, drink, and dance with.