Antigua California: Mission and Colony on the Peninsular Frontier, 1697-1768

by Harry W. Crosby

First published in 1994 and now available again, this Spanish Borderlands classic recounts Jesuit colonization of the Old California, the peninsula now known as Baja California. Jesuit missionaries founded their first settlement in 1697 and unintentionally created a Hispanic society that outlived the missions and their Indian converts. The author brings to light Jesuit missionization and culture, European-Indian contacts, mission and presidio operations, family social life, the unique peninsular economy, and the Jesuit expulsion. Four appendices provide data on Spanish kings, royal officials, Jesuit personnel and visitors, and founders of pre-1768 peninsular California families.

574 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1994

About the author

Harry W. Crosby was an American historian and photographer.

Reviews

[Katherine Relf-canas · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this precursor to Junipero Serra's expeditions I come away with the feeling that there is always more to the story.

Thanks, cousin, for creating this book about the land we both call home. I enjoyed reading every word. It is a marvelous record of the Jesuits and their incursion into a land peopled by indigenous tribes, which sadly, like the lands to the north extinguished the cultures of the vanquished. Nevertheless, the people chronicled, the good, the bad, and the ugly came alive in the pages of this masterful work of a patient historian--and man of many talents with whom I share common ancestry.