Problem: What were the strengths and weaknesses of the new social system and the economy created by these and other changes?
Think about what we've looked at in lectures and the assigned readings (like Hurtado, La Perouse, and Dana) to consider the social system that replaced the missions in Mexican California by the 1830s. For instance, the missions in Mexican California were secularized (turned into parish churches). Their vast landholdings were distributed to several hundred recipients of extensive land grants who exploited Indian labor. The Spanish government had prohibited Californians from trading with foreign merchants, but the Mexican government threw open California's ports to merchant ships worldwide.