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Beyond Hawai'i: Native Labor in the Pacific World

Gregory Rosenthal

In the century from the death of Captain James Cook in 1779 to the rise of the sugar plantations in the 1870s, thousands of Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) men left Hawaiʻi to work on ships at sea and ... More

In the century from the death of Captain James Cook in 1779 to the rise of the sugar plantations in the 1870s, thousands of Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) men left Hawaiʻi to work on ships at sea and in nā ʻāina ʻē (foreign lands). Beyond Hawaiʻi tells the story of these forgotten indigenous migrant workers and their experiences of global capitalism. Each chapter tells a unique narrative of a different Pacific Ocean industry and those Hawaiian workers who traveled and toiled there: from sandalwood harvesting to whaling to guano mining to gold mining—in Hawaiʻi, California, the Arctic Ocean, China, and beyond. Using the writings of the workers themselves, published in nineteenth-century Hawaiian-language newspapers, Beyond Hawaiʻi argues that Native Hawaiian migrant workers and the global capitalist economy they served are essential to understanding how the world’s greatest ocean became a “Hawaiian Pacific World”—the world that Hawaiian labor made.Less

An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States

Rosina Lozano

An American Language is a political history of the Spanish language in the United States. The nation has always been multilingual and the Spanish language in particular has remained as an important ... More

An American Language is a political history of the Spanish language in the United States. The nation has always been multilingual and the Spanish language in particular has remained as an important political issue into the present. After the U.S.-Mexican War, the Spanish language became a language of politics as Spanish speakers in the U.S. Southwest used it to build territorial and state governments. In the twentieth century, Spanish became a political language where speakers and those opposed to its use clashed over what Spanish's presence in the United States meant. This book recovers this story by using evidence that includes Spanish language newspapers, letters, state and territorial session laws, and federal archives to profile the struggle and resilience of Spanish speakers who advocated for their language rights as U.S. citizens. Comparing Spanish as a language of politics and as a political language across the Southwest and noncontiguous territories provides an opportunity to measure shifts in allegiance to the nation and exposes differing forms of nationalism. Language concessions and continued use of Spanish is a measure of power. Official language recognition by federal or state officials validates Spanish speakers' claims to US citizenship. The long history of policies relating to language in the United States provides a way to measure how U.S. visions of itself have shifted due to continuous migration from Latin America. Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens are crucial arbiters of Spanish language politics and their successes have broader implications on national policy and our understanding of Americans.Less

Other California: Land, Identity, and Politics on the Mexican Borderlands

Verónica Castillo-Muñoz

This book documents the story of working-class communities and how they constituted the racially and ethnically diverse landscape of Baja California. Packed with new and transformative stories, the ... More

This book documents the story of working-class communities and how they constituted the racially and ethnically diverse landscape of Baja California. Packed with new and transformative stories, the book examines the interplay of land reform and migratory labor on the peninsula from 1850 to 1954, as governments, foreign investors, and local communities shaped a vibrant and dynamic borderland alongside the booming cities of Tijuana, Mexicali, and Santa Rosalia. Migration and intermarriage between Mexican women and men from Asia, Europe, and the United States transformed Baja California into a multicultural society. Mixed-race families extended across national borders, forging new local communities, labor relations, and border politics.Less

Saints and Citizens: Indigenous Histories of Colonial Missions and Mexican California

Lisbeth Haas

This book argues that despite the physical dislocation and death the missions represented, they became sites of indigenous authority, memory, identity, and historical narration. Becoming Indian in ... More

This book argues that despite the physical dislocation and death the missions represented, they became sites of indigenous authority, memory, identity, and historical narration. Becoming Indian in California involved being renamed and reclassified as indio and neofito and receiving the status of a minor under the law, confined to a mission except when given a pass. But within the missions, native translators, artisans, and traditional and new leaders used native forms of authority, knowledge, and power to seek redress and to sustain the community. Native painters influenced the narrative space of the missions, giving meaning to the visual order. With Mexican Independence in 1821, indigenous politics took many forms, including the Chumash War of 1824. Chumash histories explained the war through indigenous forms of leadership and thought and in relation to the many types of cruelty and violence pervasive at the missions. More common than revolt, indigenous leaders during this era sought a return to indigenous ancestral territories and to gain possession of the missions and the right to exercise freedom. Indigenous citizenship became entwined in California with the emancipation and secularization policies that governed the region because of its missions. A group of indigenous citizens and landowners emerged in California during the Mexican era. But much of this indigenous colonial and Mexican history became obscured outside of native communities until now.Less

American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender, and National Identity in the Kinsey Reports

Miriam Reumann

When Alfred Kinsey's massive studies Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female appeared in 1948 and 1953 respectively, their detailed data spurred an unprecedented ... More

When Alfred Kinsey's massive studies Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female appeared in 1948 and 1953 respectively, their detailed data spurred an unprecedented public discussion of the nation's sexual practices and ideologies. As they debated what behaviors were normal or average, abnormal or deviant, Cold War Americans also celebrated and scrutinized the state of their nation, relating apparent changes in sexuality to shifts in its political structure, economy, and people. This book employs the studies and the myriad responses they evoked to examine national debates about sexuality, gender, and Americanness after World War II. Focusing on the mutual construction of postwar ideas about national identity and sexual life, it explores the many uses to which these sex surveys were put at a time of extreme anxiety about sexual behavior and its effects on the nation. Looking at real and perceived changes in masculinity, female sexuality, marriage, and homosexuality, the author develops the notion of “American sexual character,” sexual patterns and attitudes that were understood to be uniquely American and to reflect contemporary transformations in politics, social life, gender roles, and culture. She considers how apparent shifts in sexual behavior shaped the nation's workplaces, homes, and families, and how these might be linked to racial and class differences.Less

Minding the Machine: Languages of Class in Early Industrial America

Stephen Rice

This book offers a new understanding of class formation in America during the several decades before the Civil War. This was the period in the nation's early industrial development when travel by ... More

This book offers a new understanding of class formation in America during the several decades before the Civil War. This was the period in the nation's early industrial development when travel by steamboat became commonplace, when the railroad altered concepts of space and time, and when Americans experienced the beginnings of factory production. These disorienting changes raised a host of questions about what machinery would accomplish. Would it promote equality or widen the distance between rich and poor? Among the most contentious questions were those focusing on the social consequences of mechanization: while machine enthusiasts touted the extent to which machines would free workers from toil, others pointed out that people needed to tend machines, and that work was fundamentally degrading and exploitative. This book shows how members of a new middle class laid claim to their social authority and minimized the potential for class conflict by playing out class relations on less contested social and technical terrains. As they did so, they defined relations between shopowners—and the overseers, foremen, or managers they employed—and wage workers as analogous to relations between head and hand, between mind and body, and between human and machine. The book presents fascinating discussions of the mechanics' institute movement, the manual labor school movement, popular physiology reformers, and efforts to solve the seemingly intractable problem of steam boiler explosions.Less

Lewis & Clark: Legacies, Memories, and New Perspectives

Kris Fresonke and Irene Bloemraad (eds)

Two centuries after their expedition awoke the nation both to the promise and to the disquiet of the vast territory out west, Lewis and Clark still stir the imagination, and their adventure remains ... More

Two centuries after their expedition awoke the nation both to the promise and to the disquiet of the vast territory out west, Lewis and Clark still stir the imagination, and their adventure remains one of the most celebrated and studied chapters in American history. This volume explores the legacy of Lewis and Clark's momentous journey and, on the occasion of its bicentennial, considers the impact of their westward expedition on American culture. Approaching their subject from many different perspectives—literature, history, women's studies, law, medicine, and environmental history, among others—the book charts shifting attitudes about the explorers and their journals, creating a compelling, finely detailed picture of the “interdisciplinary intrigue” that has always surrounded Lewis and Clark's accomplishment. This book offers insights into ongoing debates over the relationships between settler culture and aboriginal peoples, law and land tenure, manifest destiny and westward expansion, as well as over the character of Sacagawea, the expedition's vision of nature, and the interpretation and preservation of the Lewis and Clark Trail.Less

Draw the Lightning Down: Benjamin Franklin and Electrical Technology in the Age of Enlightenment

Michael Brian Schiffer

Most of us have heard that Benjamin Franklin conducted some kind of electrical experiment with a kite. What few of us realize is that he played a major role in laying the foundations of modern ... More

Most of us have heard that Benjamin Franklin conducted some kind of electrical experiment with a kite. What few of us realize is that he played a major role in laying the foundations of modern electrical science and technology. This book, rich with historical details and anecdotes, brings to life Franklin, the large international network of scientists and inventors in which he played a key role, and their inventions. We learn what these early electrical devices—from lights and motors to musical and medical instruments—looked like, how they worked, and what their utilitarian and symbolic meanings were for those who invented and used them. Against the panorama of life in the eighteenth century, the book tells the story of the very beginnings of our modern electrical world. The earliest electrical technologies were conceived in the laboratory apparatus of physicists; because of their surprising and diverse effects, however, these technologies rapidly made their way into many other communities and activities. The author conducts us from community to community, showing how these technologies worked as they were put to use in public lectures, revolutionary experiments in chemistry and biology, and medical therapy. This story brings to light the arcane and long-forgotten inventions that made way for many modern technologies—including lightning rods (Franklin's invention), cardiac stimulation, xerography, and the internal combustion engine—and conveys the complex relationships among science, technology, and culture.Less

Gender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650-1800

Ruth Bloch

Stephen Miller (ed.)

This book brings together chapters on the origins of Anglo-American conceptions of gender and morality. It illuminates the overarching theme of this work by addressing a basic historical question: ... More

This book brings together chapters on the origins of Anglo-American conceptions of gender and morality. It illuminates the overarching theme of this work by addressing a basic historical question: Why did the attitudes toward gender and family relations that we now consider traditional values emerge when they did? The book looks deeply into eighteenth-century culture to answer this question, highlighting long-term developments in religion, intellectual history, law, and literature, showing that the eighteenth century was a time of profound transformation for women's roles as wives and mothers, for ideas about sexuality, and for notions of female moral authority. It engages topics from British moral philosophy to colonial laws regarding courtship, and from the popularity of the sentimental novel to the psychology of religious revivalism. These chapters bring a revisionist challenge to both women's studies and cultural studies as they ask us to reconsider the origins of the system of gender relations that has dominated American culture for two hundred years.Less

Taming the Elephant: Politics, Government, and Law in Pioneer California

John Burns, Vivian Louie, and Roberto Suro (eds)

This book is the last of four volumes in the distinguished California History Sesquicentennial Series, a compilation of original chapters by leading historians and writers. These interrelated volumes ... More

This book is the last of four volumes in the distinguished California History Sesquicentennial Series, a compilation of original chapters by leading historians and writers. These interrelated volumes re-examine the meaning of the founding of modern California during the state's pioneer period. General themes run through all four volumes: the interplay of traditional cultures and frontier innovation in the creation of a distinctive California society; the dynamic interaction of people and nature and the beginnings of massive environmental change; the impact of the California experience on the nation and the world; the influence of pioneer patterns on modern California; and the legacy of ethnic and cultural diversity as a major influence on the state's history. This fourth volume treats the role of post-Gold Rush California government, politics, and law in the building of a dynamic state, with influences that persist today. Provocative chapters investigate the creation of constitutional foundations, law and jurisprudence, the formation of government agencies, and the development of public policy. Chapters chart the roles played by diverse groups: criminals and peace officers, entrepreneurs and miners, farmers and public officials, defenders of discrimination and female and African American activists. The chapters also explore subjects largely overlooked in the past, such as the significance of local and federal government in pioneer California and early struggles to secure civil rights for women and racial minorities.Less