Land in California. By W. W. Robinson. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1979. 291 pages. $4.95.
Reviewed by Harry C. McDean, Associate Professor of History at San Diego
State University, where he teaches American Economic and Business History.
Because California ranks as the nation's leading agricultural
state and one of the world's top industrial regions, it is fitting that this
groundbreaking book in California land history should be reissued. First
published in 1948, this unrevised paperback edition tells the story of how
Indian lands became Franciscan missions and Californio ranchos and how various
legal and extra-legal devices of the United States encouraged private American
ownership of these lands after the Mexican-American War.
The strength of the book derives from the author's ability to
accomplish the goals he establishes in the subtitle: to tell the story of
mission lands, ranchos, squatters, mining claims, railroad grants, land scrip,
and homesteads. The author is gifted with the talent to unravel these
developments in the style of a storyteller. For example, Robinson first
describes California's early Spanish land laws and institutions, then selects
San Pascual (Pasadena) as their archetype, and narrates the area's land history.
After further discussing changes in land institutions and laws that followed
the Mexican-American War, Robinson profiles San Francisco and Los Angeles as
prototypes of such changes.
His historical methodology makes pleasant and entertaining
reading. However, some researchers may find it raises as many questions about
land in California as it answers. First, Robinson's narrative style does not
lend itself to interpretation. As a result important historical questions remain
unanswered. For example, what impact did Spanish land law have on California's
unusual patterns of agricultural growth? In what ways did the state's land laws
and institutions discourage traditional patterns of American urbanization? To
what extent did these land laws alter basic American systems of manufacturing and industry?
There also is another kind of treatment of California land
history that the modern researcher will find absent from this book: statistical
analysis. The recent development of econometrics as a tool in historical study
no doubt will revolutionize Robinson's land history when one day the modern
researcher applies it to California.
These two criticisms notwithstanding, Robinson's work still
provides the basic treatment of the subject. It is good that the book again is
available.
