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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

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

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

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

Industrial Cowboys: Miller & Lux and the Transformation of the Far West, 1850-1920

David Igler

Few industrial enterprises left a more enduring imprint on the American West than Miller and Lux, a vast meatpacking conglomerate started by two San Francisco butchers in 1858. This book examines how ... More

Few industrial enterprises left a more enduring imprint on the American West than Miller and Lux, a vast meatpacking conglomerate started by two San Francisco butchers in 1858. This book examines how Henry Miller and Charles Lux, two German immigrants, consolidated the West's most extensive land and water rights, swayed legislatures and courts, monopolized western beef markets, and imposed their corporate will on California's natural environment. It uses one case study to illuminate the industrial development and environmental transformation of the American West during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The process by which two neighborhood butchers turned themselves into landed industrialists depended to an extraordinary degree on the acquisition, manipulation, and exploitation of natural resources. The author examines the broader impact that industrialism—as exemplified by Miller and Lux—had on landscapes and waterscapes, and on human as well as plant and animal life in the West. He also provides a rich discussion of the social relations engineered by Miller and Lux, from the dispossession of California rancheros to the ethnic segmentation of the firm's massive labor force. The book also covers such topics as land acquisition and reclamation, water politics, San Francisco's unique business environment, and the city's relation to its surrounding hinterlands. Above all, it highlights essential issues that resonate for us today: who holds the right and who has the power to engineer the landscape for market production?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

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

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

The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900

Philip Ethington

This book challenges the assumptions of several decades of urban history that treat American urban politics as the expression of social-group community experience. Instead, it maintains that ... More

This book challenges the assumptions of several decades of urban history that treat American urban politics as the expression of social-group community experience. Instead, it maintains that social-group identities of race, class, ethnicity, and gender were politically constructed in the public sphere in the process of political mobilization and journalistic discourse. The book looks specifically at the political construction of urban life in San Francisco from 1850–1900.Less

Public Lands and Political Meaning: Ranchers, the Government, and the Property between Them

Karen Merrill

The history of the American West is a history of struggles over land, and none has inspired so much passion and misunderstanding as the conflict between ranchers and the federal government over ... More

The history of the American West is a history of struggles over land, and none has inspired so much passion and misunderstanding as the conflict between ranchers and the federal government over public grazing lands. Drawing upon neglected sources from organized ranchers, this is the first book to provide an historically based explanation for why the relationship between ranchers and the federal government became so embattled long before modern environmentalists became involved in the issue. Reconstructing the increasingly contested interpretations of the meaning of public land administration, this book traces the history of the political dynamics between ranchers and federal land agencies, giving us a new look at the relations of power that made the modern West. Although a majority of organized ranchers supported government control of the range at the turn of the century, by midcentury these same organizations often used a virulently antifederal discourse that fueled many a political fight in Washington and that still runs deep in American politics today. In analyzing this shift, the book shows how profoundly people's ideas about property wove their way into the political language of the debates surrounding public range policy. It demonstrates that different ideas about property played a crucial role in perpetuating antagonism on both sides of the fence. In addition to illuminating the origins of the “sagebrush rebellions” in the American West, this book also persuasively argues that political historians must pay more attention to public land management issues as a way of understanding tensions in American state-building.Less

Rebel and a Cause: Caryl Chessman and the Politics of the Death Penalty in Postwar California, 1948-1974

Theodore Hamm

This book uses the 1960 execution of Caryl Chessman as a lens for examining how politics and debates about criminal justice became a volatile mix that ignited postwar California. The effects of those ... More

This book uses the 1960 execution of Caryl Chessman as a lens for examining how politics and debates about criminal justice became a volatile mix that ignited postwar California. The effects of those years continue to be felt as the state's three-strikes law and expanding prison-construction program spark heated arguments over rehabilitation and punishment. Known as the Red Light Bandit, Chessman allegedly stalked lovers' lanes in Los Angeles. Eventually convicted of rape and kidnapping, he was sentenced to death in 1948. In prison he gained significant notoriety as a writer, beginning with his autobiographical Cell 2455 Death Row (1954). In the following years Chessman presented himself not only as an innocent man but also as one rehabilitated from his prior life of crime. He acquired an enthusiastic audience among leading criminologists, liberal intellectuals, and ordinary citizens, many of whom engaged in protests to halt Chessman's execution. The book analyzes how Chessman convinced thousands of Californians to support him, and why Governor Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, who opposed the death penalty, allowed the execution to go forward. It also demonstrates the intrinsic limits of the popular commitment to the rehabilitative ideal. This book places the Chessman case in a broad cultural and historical context, relating it to histories of prison reform, the anti-death penalty movement, the popularization of psychology, and the successive rise and decline of the New Left and the more enduring rise of the New Right.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

The Spanish Redemption: Heritage, Power, and Loss on New Mexico's Upper Rio Grande

Charles Montgomery

This compelling narrative traces the history of the upper Rio Grande's modern Spanish heritage, showing how Anglos and Hispanos sought to redefine the region's social character by glorifying its ... More

This compelling narrative traces the history of the upper Rio Grande's modern Spanish heritage, showing how Anglos and Hispanos sought to redefine the region's social character by glorifying its Spanish colonial past. This book demonstrates that northern New Mexico's twentieth-century Spanish heritage owes as much to the coming of the Santa Fe Railroad in 1880 as to the first Spanish colonial campaign of 1598. As the railroad brought capital and migrants into the region, Anglos posed an unprecedented challenge to Hispano wealth and political power. Yet unlike their counterparts in California and Texas, the Anglo newcomers could not wholly displace their Spanish-speaking rivals. Nor could they segregate themselves or the upper Rio Grande from the image, well-known throughout the Southwest, of the disreputable Mexican. Instead, prominent Anglos and Hispanos found common cause in transcending the region's Mexican character. Turning to colonial symbols of the conquistador, the Franciscan missionary, and the humble Spanish settler, they recast northern New Mexico and its people.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

Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict over Land in the American West, 1840-1900

Maria Montoya

Although Mexico lost its northern territories to the United States in 1848, battles over property rights and ownership have remained intense. This turbulent, vividly narrated story of the Maxwell ... More

Although Mexico lost its northern territories to the United States in 1848, battles over property rights and ownership have remained intense. This turbulent, vividly narrated story of the Maxwell Land Grant, a single tract of 1.7 million acres in northeastern New Mexico, shows how contending groups reinterpret the meaning of property to uphold their conflicting claims to land. The Southwest has been and continues to be the scene of a collision between land regimes with radically different cultural conceptions of the land's purpose. This book introduces Jicarilla Apaches, whose identity is rooted in a sense of place; Mexican governors and hacienda patrons seeking status as New World feudal magnates; “rings” of greedy territorial politicians on the make; women finding their own way in a man's world; Anglo homesteaders looking for a place to settle in the American West; and Dutch investors in search of gargantuan returns on their capital. The European and American newcomers “mistranslated” the prior property regimes into new rules to their own advantage and the disadvantage of those who had lived on the land before them. Their efforts to control the Maxwell Land Grant by wrapping it in their own particular myths of law and custom inevitably led to conflict and even violence as cultures and legal regimes clashed.Less