he Empresario System, Section 1. My name's Ms. Patterson. As we go through today's lecture, you'll notice certain words that appear in blue. These are your vocabulary terms. So make sure you pay close attention to their meaning, as you'll see them again.
Let's start by looking at our objectives. In this lesson, we're going to identify the role of colonization laws in opening Texas for Anglo settlement. We'll identify the contributions of Green DeWitt and Martin de Leon on the development of Texas, as well as analyze the effects of the empresario system on the development of Texas. In this section, we're going to focus in
on our first objective. So it's important to know that Mexico became its own independent republic in 1821. And soon after, in 1824, they're going to write their own constitution. Now, a "constitution" is a written document that spells out the structure, the responsibilities, and the limitations of a government.
Well at the time, the Mexican constitution was very similar to the United States Constitution in the sense that they both elected their president and had Congress. Mexico was also a republic, which means that the supreme power lied in the hands of the people because they were allowed to vote. Mexico is going to break into 19 states and four territories.
And the province of Texas, as well the province of Coahuila, are going to join together to make one of the 19 states. The name of the state is going to be known as Coahuila y Texas. And the capital is Saltillo. Texas was also allowed to elect one member of the state legislature. So the person they choose to be their very first
representative is Baron de Bastrop, who was originally a very prominent member of the San Antonio society while Texas was a part of Spain. Also at this time, Mexico is going to pass the Colonization Law of 1824. Now, this law is going to say that each Mexican state is going to be allowed to come up with their own immigration policies.
However, there were going to be some restrictions when it came to US immigration. For example, the amount of land that could be given in one grant was limited to 48,708 acres. Also grantees had to live in Texas. So a "grantee" is a person who is awarded a land grant. And they had to live in Texas, show that they had good moral character, and become Catholic.
And there were restrictions in where these people could live. They were not allowed to live within 10 leagues of the coast or 20 leagues of international boundaries. Now a "league" is just a unit of measure for land. Many countries kind of have different ideas of what a league is. But in this case, we're going to refer to it as three miles. So this means that nobody was allowed to live within 30
miles of the coast or 60 miles of international boundaries, unless they had special permission. So states could make up their own colonization laws. And that's exactly what Coahuila y Texas is going to do. So in 1825, they write their own colonization law. And what they say is that if you come to live in Texas with your family, you can get one league of land.
Now, this is the equivalent of 4,423 acres. If you were single and a male, you could come and get land. But you were only awarded 1/4 of a league until you got married. Once you were married, you would get the other 3/4 of that league and you would have a league. Unless a single man married a Mexican woman, in that case he was awarded a bonus of 1/4 of a league.
So altogether, that would be 1 and 1/4 league that he was given. So the reason they did this is because they really wanted to increase the population. So Tejanos wanted to encourage foreign immigration to increase the worth of the land and to provide more opportunities for trade. They believed that this would make Texas more wealthy and
would give it more value. Also more settlers meant that they could provide protection against Native American attacks and raids. Let's do a quick section review. In this section, we learned that Mexico became its own republic in 1821 and that they wrote their own constitution in 1824. At the same time, they also wrote the new
colonization law in 1824. And this law is going award states the ability to write their own colonization laws within reason. They had to follow certain restrictions. I hope you learned something new. Have a fantastic day.
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