Creating the American West
Subtitle: boundaries and borderlands
By: Derek R. Everett
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 302
ISBN-13: 9780806144467
Subjects: Boundaries; History; Territorial expansion
Description: Boundaries -- lines imposed on the landscape -- shape our lives, dictating everything from which candidates we vote for to what schools our children attend to the communities with which we identify. In Creating the American West, historian Derek R. Everett examines the function of these internal lines in American history generally and in the West in particular. Drawing lines to create states in the trans-Mississippi West, he points out, imposed a specific form of political organization that made the West truly American. Everett examines how settlers lobbied for boundaries and how politicians imposed them. He examines the origins of boundary-making in the United States from the colonial era through the Louisiana Purchase. Case studies then explore the ethnic, sectional, political, and economic angles of boundaries. Everett first examines the boundaries between Arkansas and its neighboring Native cultures, and the pseudo war between Missouri and Iowa. He then traces the lines splitting the Oregon Country and the states of California and Nevada, and considers the ethnic and political consequences of the boundary between New Mexico and Colorado. He explains the evolution of the line splitting the Dakotas, and concludes with a discussion of ways in which state boundaries can contribute toward new interpretations of borderlands history. A major theme in the history of state boundaries is the question of whether to use geometric or geographic lines -- in other words, lines corresponding to parallels and meridians or those fashioned by natural features. With the distribution of western land, Everett shows, geography gave way to geometry and transformed the West. The end of boundary-making in the late nineteenth century is not the end of the story, however. These lines continue to complicate a host of issues including water rights, taxes, political representation, and immigration. Creating the American West shows how the past continues to shape the present.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-291) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: the significance of state boundaries; title: A little patch of ground: the precedents for western state boundaries; title: The fairest portion of our union: early boundaries in the trans-Mississippi West; title: On the extreme frontier: the western Arkansas boundary; title: Blood will be shed: the Missouri-Iowa boundary; title: Nature has marked out the boundaries: the Oregon country boundaries; title: A state bordering upon anarchy: the California-Nevada boundary; title: Two distinct civilizations: the New Mexico-Colorado boundary; title: Let us divide: the Dakota boundaries; title: A broader view of borderlands.