ABSTRACT
Introduction is an impressive display of rhetoric, intended to consolidate support, eliminate discord, and establish a hearty municipal infrastructure that might allow the colony to thrive under continued Mexican rule. While the annexation of Texas may seem inevitable in retrospect, in the fall of 1829 Stephen F. Austin colony was at a crossroads. Situated at a crossroads between cultures, nations, and peoples, Austin's colony occupied a porous and liminal space, neither fully American nor fully Mexican. The absence of these parties in Austin's narrative is all the more conspicuous when juxtaposed with the translated laws of the colony, many of which detail rules and regulations for dealing with non-Anglo persons. Austin's colony did not seek to cast aside the authority of its cultural "mother" country but instead sought, through revolution and annexation, to establish closer ties to it, ironically countervailing the exact purpose for which Mexico had approved Austin's settlement contract.
