Daniel Brendan Lynch
C. Phil. US History, UCLA
M.A. World History & Single Subject Teaching Credential, CSU Long Beach
B.A. History, UC Berkeley
United States, North American West, Borderlands, California
My dissertation focuses on the convergence of male Southerners and Californios in greater Los Angeles from the start of the Mexican American War through the Civil War Era. The United States defeated both Mexico and the Confederacy within twenty years, expanding national power in the West while confirming it in the South. In the far corner of the Southwest, two influential groups of men worked together to mediate Southern California's incorporation into the Union: migrants from the antebellum South and the local rancheros of Alta California. Guided by similar seigniorial ideals regarding masculine honor, land ownership and social order, Southerners and Californios joined forces in a political faction known as the Chivalry. They pushed for territorial separation from the rest of the state; coordinated vigilante activity; and forged hybrid hierarchies of race, class and gender in a complex multiethnic society. Their experience illustrates some of the possibilities of intercultural cooperation in a dynamic period of imperial expansion, sectional conflict and national reconstruction.
Founder, LA Writing Group: Our goal is to provide a positive and constructive environment for scholars to share their work related to Los Angeles and Southern California. Scholars in any discipline and at any stage beyond their BA are welcome to join. We meet at the Huntington Library in San Marino.
DEEP L.A. USC-UCLA Los Angeles History Conference, October 2015: lahistoryconference.tumblr.com/
Personal website: Southlandia.org
"On the Edge of Empires, Republics and Identities: De la Guerra's Sword of the War and the California Native Cavalry," Virginia Scharff, ed., Empire and Liberty: The American West and the Civil War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 105-121.
"Southern California Chivalry: Southerners, Californios, and the Forging of an Unlikely Alliance," Leading Edge, California History, vol. 91 no. 3 (Fall 2014), 60-62.
"From Test Plots to Large Lots: The Gardens of San Marino, California as Natural and Social Laboratories," UCLA History Journal, vol. 25 no. 1 (2014), 17-29.
Co-authored with William Deverell, "Our Own Civil War," Zocalo Public Square, 2011.
"Gabrielino (Tongva)," Peter C. Mancall, ed., Encyclopedia of Native American History (New York: Facts on File, 2011).
Grants and Awards
UCLA Public History Innovators Grant
Huntington Library-Western History Association Martin Ridge Fellowship
Bancroft Library Gunther Barth Fellowship
Department of History Rosecrans Pre-Dissertation Year Fellowship
Graduate Division Graduate Research Mentorship
Stephen Aron, Committee Chair
Roundtable Discussion: “The Civil War Era and the American West: Unifying Concepts for Scholars, Students and Museum Goers,” Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, April 2015, St. Louis, MO.
"A Chivalric Scheme in the Southwest: The Southern and Californio Plan to Split California," Annual Conference of the Western History Association, Newport Beach, California, October 16, 2014.
"Southern California Chivalry: White Male Southerners, Californios, and the Forging of an Unlikely Alliance, 1846-1856," Whitsett Graduate Seminar in California History, April 24, 2014.
"Southern and Californio Convergence in Southern California: General Andrés Pico and the Chivalry Democrats, 1846-1861," Bancroft Library Roundtable, Berkeley, California, February 21, 2013.
"Southerners, Californios and Southern California Secession," Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association Annual Meeting, San Diego, California, August 10, 2012.
Edit This Page