Browsing by Subject "Frontier"
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Item Colonial border control : reconsidering migrants and the making of New Spain's northern borderlands, 1714-1820(2015-05) Villarreal, Christina Marie; Twinam, Ann, 1946-; Deans-Smith, SussanThis report explores how residents of the Louisiana-Texas borderland defined and maintained the northeastern frontier of New Spain in the long eighteenth century. Utilizing colonial correspondence, royal decrees, and petitions, this study considers how subaltern historical actors--runaways, deserters, and foreigners--affected the geographic reality of Spanish sovereignty in the American Gulf Coast. Their movements across imperial borders illuminate the elusiveness of those borderlines and suggest alternate boundaries separating Spain's American territory from that of her rivals. In their responses to royal questionnaires, soldiers garrisoned at the easternmost presidios of Los Adaes and Nacogdoches based their perceptions of New Spain's geopolitical limits on the actions of border crossers. The actions of religious and political leaders, as well as the official protocol regarding runaway slaves and deserting soldiers, served as the evidence frontiersmen used to identify the location of the northern borderland. The tenuous status of the periphery led to flexibility in imperial control. Rather than enforce Spanish laws from the top-down, Texas officials relied on the knowledge and understanding of local dwellers to protect an ill-defined boundary in ways that both challenged royal law while maintaining distinct elements of colonial border control.Item Essays on Efficiency of the Farm Credit System and Dynamic Correlations in Fossil Fuel Markets(2012-11-28) Dang, Trang Phuong Th 1977-Markets have always changed in response to either exogenous or endogenous shocks. Many large events have occurred in financial and energy markets the last ten years. This dissertation examines market behavior and volatility in agricultural credit and fossil fuel markets under exogenous and endogenous changes in the last ten years. The efficiency of elements within the United States Farm Credit System, a major agricultural lender in the United States, and the dynamic correlation between coal, oil and natural gas prices, the three major fossil fuels, are examined. The Farm Credit system is a key lender in the U.S. agricultural sector, and its performance can influence the performance of the agricultural sector. However, its efficiency in providing credit to the agricultural sector has not been recently examined. The first essay of the dissertation provides assessments on the performance of elements within the Farm Credit System by measuring their relative efficiency using a stochastic frontier model. The second essay addresses the changes in relationship in coal, oil, and natural gas markets with respect to changes and turbulence in the last decade, which has also not been fully addressed in literature. The updated assessment on the relative performance of entities within the Farm Credit System provides information that the Farm Credit Administration and U.S. policy makers can use in their management of and policy toward the Farm Credit System. The measurement of the changes in fossil fuel markets? relationships provides implications for energy investment, energy portfolio anagement, energy risk management, and energy security. It can also be used as a foundation for structuring forecasting models and other models related to energy markets. The dynamic correlations between coal, oil, and natural gas prices are examined using a dynamic conditional correlation multivariate autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (MGARCH DCC) model. The estimated results show that the FCS?s five banks and associations with large assets have more efficiently produced credit to the U.S. agricultural sector than smaller sized associations. Management compensation is found to be positively associated with the system?s efficiency. More capital investment and monitoring along with possible consolidation are implied for smaller sized associations to enhance efficiency. On average, the results show that the efficiency of the associations is increasing over time while the average efficiency of the five large banks is more stable. Overall, the associations exhibit a higher variation of efficiency than the five banks. In terms of energy markets the estimates from the MGARCH DCC model indicate significant and changing dynamic correlations and related volatility between the coal, oil, and natural gas prices. The coal price was found to experience more volatility and become more closely related to oil and natural gas prices in recent periods. The natural gas price was found to become more stable and drift away from its historical relationship with oil.Item Frontier Capitalist: The Economic and Environmental History of William Currie Jones(2014-04-30) Dowdle, Zachary Lynn; Dowdle, Zachary Lynn; Pierce, Jason; Dewar, David; Klingemann, John; Hack, TeresaWilliam Currie Jones, a Tom Green County pioneer, arrived in Texas in 1878 finding a region that verged on being a raw frontier. Jones employed economic flexibility over the course of his career, adapting to the dynamic western market. Due to his early acquisition of land with river frontage and manipulation of the environment, Jones capitalized on his wealth of natural resources by expanding into town building and real estate promotion. As Congress in Washington manipulated tariffs at the expense of western woolgrowers, Jones found opportunity in other industries. Jones evolved along with the county and region, displaying an increasing economic sophistication. By the end of his life, the one-time rancher had turned to the emerging exploration of hydrocarbons, predating the discovery of the Permian Basin oil fields by a decade. Jones embodied the pioneer spirit, which allowed him considerable success during his lifetime.