BYU-Hawaii junior history major Spencer McBride's research paper on "The Catholic Conquest of California" won the "best undergraduate" prize on March 18, 2006, during the annual conference of the five major Hawaii universities in the regional chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honor society.
McBride, who is from Ramona, California, wrote his award-winning paper on how, unlike other areas in the Nuevo Mundo, the Spanish empire extended its influence throughout California in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries by means of "the spread of their Catholic faith." The paper was originally a requirement for Dr. James Tueller's History 390 class, Spain in the Pacific, which McBride took during winter semester 2005.
"The class was fascinating; and it was an unexpected surprise, but a good one, to win," McBride said of the award, which also included $100. He added after finishing his studies at BYU-Hawaii, he hopes to go to graduate school on the East Coast.
"Unlike Central and South America, California was unique because it was not conquered by military action or colonization, but by Catholic priests establishing missions along the coast. Thus the justifying ideology became the means of conquest in California," McBride said.
His paper explains the first exploratory expedition to California is widely believed to have occurred in 1542, while Spanish Jesuit priests established their first mission in Baja California in 1697. Later, Franciscan missions "served the primary purpose of bringing 'civilization' to the Indians by converting them to Catholicism."
But it wasn't until the English had become "a strong imperial force" and the "activity of Russian traders moving southward along the Pacific coast from Alaska" that the Spanish "crown underwent a change in 1767 that would prove significant in the eventual settlement of Alta California," starting in San Diego.
"It should be noted that there is a great sense of irony included in calling a conquest religious and a conquering expedition sacred. Empires are political entities, and in history have most commonly been concerned with political strength, military might, and economic prosperity," McBride wrote.
"Religion often plays a part in the establishing, expanding and governing of large empires like that of the Spanish, but it is most often a role of justifying the empire's conquest and governing of conquered populations. What may have seemed 'spiritual' or 'peaceful' to the Spanish was viewed as such in relation to past conquests, but the Indians in all likelihood did not see it as such in its initial stages."
McBride's paper also notes, "the Philippines provide an example of the Spanish empire securing a claimed territory chiefly by means of colonization...that began with Legazpi in 1565."
"Spain had been successful in conquering and securing the Philippines against foreign encroachment by means of colonization. With the annual visit of a galleon from Acapulco, this proved to be a very effective method," he added.
One week earlier, on March 11, 2006, McBride delivered another paper he had been researching for the previous six months to the Mormon Pacific Historical Society on the first Latter-day Saint missionaries in Samoa: Two Hawaiian elders sent there by Walter Murray Gibson in 1862 — 26 years before the mission officially opened.
Speaking at the MPHS' annual conference, held this year in Kailua, Oahu, to mark the 50th anniversary of the last wooden chapel built in Hawaii, McBride detailed how Gibson, who had earlier visited Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, joined the Church in Utah and soon moved to Hawaii. When all American missionaries were pulled out due to the Utah War, Gibson declared himself "chief president" of the Church in the islands and took over the mission. He began telling local members there was no longer an organized Church in Utah and started selling offices, among other unusual practices.
"His subsequent excommunication in 1864 left Samuela Manoa and Kimo Belio figuratively and literally stranded for over two-and-a-half decades," McBride said. He added that their "unauthorized dispatch" to Samoa "by Walter Murray Gibson was an attempt to further his own political aspirations by spreading the Mormon faith in the Pacific."
"However, the resulting missionary service of Belio and Manoa failed to grant Gibson greater political influence, but did successfully lay the foundation of a lasting Mormon presence in Samoa."
McBride's paper on Belio, Manoa and Gibson will eventually be published in the proceedings of the Mormon Pacific Historical Society.