Stephen F. Austin és a Texasi Köztársaság születése
Stephen F. Austin and the birth of the Republic of Texas

Summary/Abstract: 2016 marked the 180th anniversary of the Texas Revolution, during which the territory formerly belonging to the Spanish colonial empire seceded from Mexico, and thus the Republic of Texas was established. Stephen F. Austin played an important role in this process as he founded the first American colony in the area with the permission of the Spanish, and then the Mexican government. Eugene C. Barker’s work of 1925, The Life of Stephen F. Austin, was the only monograph about the Austin-family and Stephen F. Austin for a long time, therefore it affected generations of historians. In 1999, Gregg Cantrell’s biography entitled Stephen F. Austin, Empresario of Texas was published, which, based on a wide range of sources, put Austin’s life and career in a new perspective. It took new aspects into consideration to make the highly idealized image more nuanced. While Barker’s biography depicted Austin as a humble, self-sacrificing statesman who worked tirelessly for his new homeland, Cantrell focused on his complex personality. He showed the reasons for his decisions; his dilemmas in his private life, as a businessman, politician, and diplomat; the challenges and opportunities he had; and most importantly, how all these influenced the history of Texas in the first decades of the 19th century. The aim of this study is to bring Stephen F. Austin into the limelight and examine his role in the Americanization of Texas from a new perspective, focusing on his relationship with the American settlers as well as the Mexican and American governments. The analysis is based on primary sources: Austin’s private and official correspondence, newspaper articles, travelers’ accounts, and other documents.

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