The Southwest — a region first colonized by Spain and later incorporated into Mexico before becoming part of the United States through conquest — has long been an overlooked chapter in U.S. history. Often misunderstood outside the region and overshadowed by national narratives rooted in English colonialism along the eastern seaboard, its story is essential to understanding the nation today. As debates over immigration and the growing Latino population shape public life, the Southwest has moved to the center of national politics and culture. This presentation examines how the American Revolution reverberated across the region, strengthening emerging ideas of republican government and human rights within the Spanish world. When these territories later became part of the United States, those ideals collided with the realities of racism and conquest in ways that continue to influence the nation.
Benjamin H. Johnson is Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Department of History at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of numerous works on the U.S.-Mexico border and environmental history, including Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans (2003), Bordertown: The Odyssey of an American Place (Yale University Press, 2008), Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive Era Conservation (2017) and Texas: An American History (2025). Johnson is also a member of “Refusing to Forget,” a public history project dedicated to commemorating the legacies of border violence in the 1910s. The project has received awards from the Western History Association, the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians. Johnson previously served as co-editor of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, currently co-edits the Journal of Texas History and the Weber Series in New Borderlands History at the University of North Carolina Press and is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.
