Title: 1800-1860: Business and the Economy: Overview | Encyclopedia.com
Headings: 1800-1860: Business and the Economy: Overview
1800-1860: Business and the Economy: Overview
1800-1860: Business and the Economy: Overview

Content: When the United States expanded westward, it encountered the Spanish Empire, and, later, the Republic of Mexico. The Spanish had established colonies within the present boundaries of the United States before the English even gained their weak foothold in Virginia in 1607. In 1598 Spaniards led by Juan de Onate formed the colony of New Mexico. Although it never possessed a large population or a dynamic economy (by European standards at least), New Mexico, and later Texas and California, developed distinct economies based on livestock production. Aided by the American penetration of Mexican markets in the 1820s through the 1840s, most of what is now the Southwest came under American control by 1848. As with the Indians, the Hispanics of New Mexico witnessed an economic revolution. Anglos came to legally and illegally acquire much of their land, and more Mexican-Americans entered the cash economy. The Western Economy. From Kentucky corn fields to California gold mines, the United States expanded its boundaries and its economy over much of the American West before 1860. Americans brought themselves, their animals, their seeds, and their tools to transform the landscape beyond the Appalachian Mountains.