On the Same Ground: Images of the United States, Mexico, and Comanche Nation from around the time of the U.S.-Mexican War (1846-1848)

Abstract

This dissertation proposes a radically new set of objects through which to examine and understand the U.S.-Mexican War (1846-1848). While the majority of studies on images related to the conflict focus on popular prints of battle scenes and genre paintings created for audiences in the United States, this project explores works from across North America, highlighting the significance of maps of the borderlands, painted Comanche shields, and representations of pre-contact American societies in illustrated books and academic art. Historical figures such as Stephen F. Austin and Samuel Colt become critical to art historical analysis of influential images; international artists including Emanuel Leutze and Juan Cordero are examined comparatively, in relation to systems of global politics, patronage, and nationalist constructions. More so than any other artforms of the period, the works explored in this study facilitated the war by heightening migration and competition, played central roles in the development of Indigenous and colonial power structures, and shaped external and internal perceptions of the central nations at war—the United States, Mexico, and Comanche Nation. Although wars are typically framed as binaries or clashes between opposites, this dissertation applies Kobena Mercer’s concept of the “challenge of sameness” to demonstrate the similarities between nations at war. New visual technologies and artistic innovations are forced into being through competitions for the same resources in the landscapes between the United States and Mexico. Attempts to demarcate difference—through drawing borders on maps or relegating Indigenous people to an imaginary past—often fail because, despite imbalances of power, both the colonizers and the colonized share the same desire for sovereignty and land.