Howard R. Lamar

Land Policy in the Spanish Southwest, 1846–1891: A Study in Contrasts

In Choosing to discuss land policy in that part of the Spanish Southwest which comprises present central and northern New Mexico and most of southern Colorado, I would appear to be using a model area of the West to demonstrate once again that the Homestead Act and principle were unworkable. In actuality the purpose is to note generally what can happen when an American land system runs into an older and highly different Spanish-Mexican one. As Howard W. Odum has observed, “Here two great culture systems have met and clashed and fused and are still in process of clashing and fusing.”

Editing and Publishing The Frontier in History With Leonard Thompson, 1971-1981

The author, who edited The Frontier in History: North America and Southern Africa Compared (1981) with the late Leonard Thompson, tells how he first met Thompson and later organized with him a series of graduate student seminars comparing the North American and southern African frontiers. He then discusses the publication of their book, which appeared the same year as George Fredricksons White Supremacy, and how their work (together with Fredricksons research) has influenced comparative frontier studies today.