David Joseph Weber (December 20, 1940 – August 20, 2010) was an American historian whose research focused on the history of the Southwestern U.S. and its transition from Spanish and Mexican control to becoming part of the United States.
"[1] At Southern Methodist University, Weber established the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies and later was chair of the history department.
[7] Weber joined the faculty of San Diego State University in 1967 and taught at the Universidad de Costa Rica in 1970, lecturing in Spanish, as part of the Fulbright Program.
[2] In 1976 Weber accepted a position at Southern Methodist University, where he established the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies.
[11] Among the more than 20 books he authored on the subject, his books The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico (1982), Barbáros: Spaniards and their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (2008), and The Spanish Frontier in North America (1992), documented and explored elements about the Spanish conquest, Indios Bárbaros, and its effects on Native Americans.
[5] Historian Jesus de la Teja described Weber's The Mexican Frontier as "a game changer in the field of the history of the Southwest".
[13] William J. Cronon of the University of Wisconsin, Madison called him "probably the single most important scholar of Spanish borderland history in North America in the second half of the 20th century", saying that "There is no one to compare with him in terms of original scholarship or sweeping synthesis.
"[5] Benjamin Johnson of SMU said that "he was at least a generation ahead of his time in recognizing how entwined Mexico and the United States were and are".
[1] De la Teja held The Mexican Frontier as "the seminal study that confirmed Weber's status as the leading representative of a new kind of borderlands history.
By The Spanish Frontier, he presented the church and religion in anthropological terms, an effort noted as "balanced" by a reviewer in the Catholic Southwest.
Previous works had focused exclusively on the European-American settlers from the US in Texas and had failed to note that they were supported by many Mexican-born citizens.
His work also, for the first time, linked the revolution with the settlers' dissatisfaction with the extremely unstable state of Mexican politics during that era.