| Founding the Far West: California, Oregon, and Nevada, 1840-1890 Contributor(s): Johnson, David Alan (Author) |
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ISBN: 0520073487 ISBN-13: 9780520073487 Publisher: University of California Press OUR PRICE: $62.37 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: July 1992 Annotation: "Founding the Far West" is an ambitious and vividly written narrative of the early years of statehood and statesmanship in three pivotal western territories. Johnson offers a model example of a new approach to history that is transforming our ideas of how America moved west, one that breaks the mold of "regional" and "frontier" histories to show why Western history is also American history. Johnson explores the conquest, immigration, and settlement of the first three states of the western region. He also investigates the building of local political customs, habits, and institutions, as well as the socioeconomic development of the region. While momentous changes marked the Far West in the later nineteenth century, distinctive local political cultures persisted. These were a legacy of the pre-Civil War conquest and settlement of the regions but no less a reflection of the struggles for political definition that took place during constitutional conventions in each of the three states. At the center of the book are the men who wrote the original constitutions of these states and shaped distinctive political cultures out of the common materials of antebellum American culture. "Founding the Far West" maintains a focus on the individual experience of the constitution writers--on their motives and ambitions as pioneers, their ideological intentions as authors of constitutions, and the successes and failures, after statehood, of their attempts to give meaning to the constitutions they had produced. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - 19th Century |
| Dewey: 979.02 |
| LCCN: 91030434 |
| Physical Information: 1.29" H x 6.34" W x 9.36" (1.86 lbs) 474 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 19th Century - Cultural Region - Western U.S. - Geographic Orientation - California - Geographic Orientation - Nevada - Geographic Orientation - Oregon - Cultural Region - West Coast - Cultural Region - Pacific Northwest |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Founding the Far West is an ambitious and vividly written narrative of the early years of statehood and statesmanship in three pivotal western territories. Johnson offers a model example of a new approach to history that is transforming our ideas of how America moved west, one that breaks the mold of "regional" and "frontier" histories to show why Western history is also American history. Johnson explores the conquest, immigration, and settlement of the first three states of the western region. He also investigates the building of local political customs, habits, and institutions, as well as the socioeconomic development of the region. While momentous changes marked the Far West in the later nineteenth century, distinctive local political cultures persisted. These were a legacy of the pre-Civil War conquest and settlement of the regions but no less a reflection of the struggles for political definition that took place during constitutional conventions in each of the three states. At the center of the book are the men who wrote the original constitutions of these states and shaped distinctive political cultures out of the common materials of antebellum American culture. Founding the Far West maintains a focus on the individual experience of the constitution writers-on their motives and ambitions as pioneers, their ideological intentions as authors of constitutions, and the successes and failures, after statehood, of their attempts to give meaning to the constitutions they had produced. |