Anglo-American colonization in Mexican Texas took place between 1821 and 1835. Because Spain had first opened Texas to Anglo Americans in 1820, less than one year before Mexico achieved its independence. Its traditional policy forbade foreigners in its territory, but Spain was unable to persuade its own citizens to move to remote and sparsely populated Texas. There were only three settlements in the province, small towns with outlying ranches. The missions near the latter two, once expected to be nucleus communities, because they had been or were being secularized, while those near Nacogdoches had been closed since the 1770s. Recruiting foreigners to develop the Spanish frontier was not new.
As early as the 1790s, Spain invited Anglo Americans