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Hello, in 1848 in Mexico lost a war with the United States of America.

It also lost half its land, including Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico

and part of Colorado.

It was humiliating for Mexico and the recriminations led to civil war.

It was devastating for Native Americans who lived freely in former Northern Mexico and now

had to contend with white settlers from the east and their demands and their diseases.

And it was a costly victory for the USA, which now had to decide if its new states were

slave states or free, raising the stakes between North and South and the disputes that led

to the American Civil War.

With me to discuss the Mexican American War, 1846 to 1848, our Frank Cogliano, Professor

of American History at the University of Edinburgh, Jacqueline Fiasiigl, Professor of American

and Niduina's History at the University of East Anglia and Thomas Rath, lecturer in Latin

American History at University College London.

Frank Cogliano, we know how America came into being, but how in America, I'm sorry, how

in Mexico become a state?

Mexico became a state in a kind of remarkably similar way to the United States.

It had a revolution and a war of independence.

...