2026/01/01 by Emmanuelle Perez Tisserant
paper · doi:10.1525/ch.2026.103.3.38
On July 4, 1836, Yerba Buena, a small coastal settlement at the entrance to the San Francisco Bay, celebrated with great fanfare both the sixtieth anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the completion of the first permanent house in the community that a decade later would become the West Coast’s commercial magnet. A few months later, when Californians rebelled against their Mexican governor in November 1836, some immediately thought it was an “American Revolution.” Hadn’t the United States just made a formal offer to buy California, and especially San Francisco Bay? Hadn’t Texas done the same, seceding from the Republic of Mexico and immediately sending emissaries to join the American Union? Had not the rebels been aided by representatives of the United States, and had they not promised religious liberty necessary to Protestant immigrants? This essay proposes a different reading of the 1836 revolt in Alta California, putting it in the context of Mexican politics and nation-building, particularly regarding federalism and its relation to the borderlands. I argue that contrary to the historiography associating the revolt with the ultimate annexation of California to the United States, the rebels designed their declaration not with ambitions to join the U.S. but to reform their relationship with Mexico, based on Mexican precedents and experience. The result was a political conflict among Californians, about California and Mexico, rather than American manifest destiny.