A 1650 map by French cartographer Nicholas Sanson showing California as an island. |
Although this blog is usually devoted to early modern history (roughly from the end of the Middle Ages, around 1450, to the French and Industrial Revolutions, around 1800), this post will be about a topic closer to home: the history of California partition and separatism efforts, and why that history matters.
It turns out that the elected officials of California actually did vote to split it up, back in 1855 and 1859. But these efforts by a sparsely-populated territory of a nation slipping into what would become the Civil War understandably failed to generate political momentum on the federal level. This marked the final stage of a pseudo-rebellion that doesn't get as much attention as that of the Lone Star state. And for good reason: it officially lasted for less than a month. Led from his base in Sonoma by a Mormon farmer and miner named William B. Ide, the California Republic officially declared independence on June 14, 1846, and ended on July 9th of the same year.
It wasn't much of a revolution. But the independence declaration, which was led by Anglo colonists and coordinated with United States military commanders, had served its purpose: the US invasion of California during the Mexican-American War (1846-48) began in earnest with Commodore John Sloat's occupation of Monterey on July 1st. Within a matter of weeks, the short-lived Republic had begun to segue into the beginnings of a provisional government for the newly-established US territory of California.
The legacy of the republic lives on in one anachronistic respect: the California flag, with its famous bear and star and "California Republic" label. (And no, California was never supposed to be called the Pear Republic, despite what Snopes' unwise flirtation with Onion-style parody articles might've told you).
Detail from California's Proclamation of Independence with the earliest sketch of the Bear flag, June 14, 1846. |
State flag of California flying above SF City Hall, via Wikimedia Commons. |
One of the best books I've read on the origins of national identity, The Fabrication of Louis XIV, embeds this claim in its very title. Louis XIV existed as an historical personage, but his national legend had to be intentionally constructed, more or less out of thin air. So, too, with national identities in general. California is an excellent example: when some of my compatriots complain about Spanish-speakers who "need to speak English" because "this is America," I feel a sense of historical whiplash. After all, over one third of the United States (including California) was once a part of the Spanish empire. I'm writing this from within a stone's throw of a Spanish mission that was founded in 1791. Even leaving aside the fact that the United States has no official language (under the express direction of the Founding Fathers, who were well aware of the symbolic significance of that decision), it is just an historical fact that Spanish-speaking communities long predate English-speaking ones in a vast swathe of the present-day United States.
Map of Las Californias (here marked as "Nueva" and "Vieja") at the beginning of the 19th century, from Antonio García Cubas' Atlas Geográfico, Estadístico e Histórico de la República Mexicana (1857) |
And in fact, the Bear Flag Revolt wasn't even the first independence movement of the region. In 1836, a group of inhabitants of what was then known as "Alta California" (to differentiate it from Baja) declared independence from Mexico. They were led by a Californio named Juan Alvarado, who declared himself de facto governor of the new nation and who later served as the official governor of Las Californias from 1837 to 1842. The region was eventually readdmitted to Mexico two years later, but only after having obtained a vague allowance that California remained a "sovereign state." The Alvarado iteration of California proclaimed its flag to be a red star on a white field: here we see the emergence of the first element in what would become the Bear Flag that flies today.
The last surviving "Lone Star of California" flag from the 1836 Alvarado rebellion, now housed at the Gene Autry Western Museum in LA. |
Less than ten years later, in 1855, the California State Assembly actually managed to successfully pass a proposal to divide the state into three parts: the state of Colorado (all southern counties as far north as Monterey); the State of Shasta (all northern counties north of Sonoma) and California in the middle. However, the bill died in the US Senate. Four years later, another proposal was launched to split California into two parts, again named California (north of the 36th parallel) and Colorado (south). Again, it failed.
My rough map of the 1855 three-state proposal. |
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As for the idea itself, although highly unlikely to pass, I don't think it's as crazy as some seem to think. For one thing, it's happened before: West Virginia split from Virginia, the Washington Territory split from the Oregon Territory, etc. And, in case you couldn't already guess my politics from what I wrote above, as a left-leaning voter I think that most proposals to split California would be beneficial in terms of hastening along the demographic wave that some political forecasters expect to stifle GOP hopes in the future: it's difficult for me to imagine any three-way split of the state that wouldn't result in at least two blue or blue-ish states, likely centered on SF and LA.
Various 21st century proposals to divide California, via Wikipedia. |
Back when I was a PhD student at UT Austin, I TAed for a professor who, when teaching this in his US history survey, joked that Texans were so proud of the distinctive shape of their state that, if this clause were ever triggered, Texans would assemble a team of mapmakers to find a way to split the state into five miniature Texas-shaped pieces! I tried putting together a mockup but gave up - it turns out that it's really hard to split a state into tiny versions of itself, unless we happen to be talking about the square ones. More than likely, a Texas split would look something like the regional map below:
But that's a story for another day. In the meantime, adiós from Alta California.
1 comment:
With regard to Snopes,
At https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bearing-the-flag/
There is a link to https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/false-authority/
I understand the second link says the first link was intentionally written to be false.
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