"Featuring compelling biographical essays on individuals from the key groups who experienced the rapid shifts in national boundaries in the Gulf region, this work opens an exciting new perspective on the problems of identity and loyalty in a transnational world."--Rafe Blaufarb, author of "Bonapartists in the Borderlands" "A sparkling set of insightful essays that illuminates the interplay of natives, settlers, maroons, and slaves in a pivotal borderland contested by rival empires. Local, imperial, and racial identities overlapped in a shifting kaleidoscope of power, resistance, and adaptation."--Alan Taylor, author of "The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution" "This expert handling of a crucial period that saw the emergence of the modern nation-states promises to become indispensable reading for specialists and students alike."--Serge Ricard, Emeritus, Sorbonne Nouvelle "Clearly shows how the contest for empire across the Gulf Borderlands between 1763 and 1821 not only shifted international boundaries but also challenged the political loyalties and personal identities of this region's multiethnic and multicultural inhabitants."--Steve Hackel, University of California, Riverside Between 1760 and 1820, many groups in North America grappled with differences of identity, nationality, and loyalty tested by revolutionary challenges. "Nexus of Empire" turns the focus on the people who inhabited one of the continent's most dynamic borderlands--the Gulf of Mexico region--where nations and empires competed for increasingly important strategic and commercial advantages. The essays in this collection examine the personal experiences of men and women, Native Americans, European colonists, free people of color, and slaves, analyzing the ways in which these individuals defined and redefined themselves amid a world of competing loyalties. This volume humanizes the promise and perils of living, working, and fighting in a region experiencing constant political upheaval and economic uncertainties. It offers intriguing glimpses into a fast-changing world in which individuals' attitudes and actions reveal the convoluted balancing acts of identities that characterized this population and this era.