Founding the Far West

California, Oregon, and Nevada, 1840-1890

By: David Alan Johnson

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Hardcover | 24 July 1992 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
474 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
2.37 x 1.59 x 0.37

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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.

Industry Reviews

"[A] lucid history . . . paints a picture of stark contrasts that he claims remain visible to this day: California a mixture of Hispanic and American cultures; agrarian and isolated Oregon' and 'Jackpot mentality' Nevada. Well organized and clearly formed."--"Publishers Weekly

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Non-Fiction History Regional & National History History of the Americas Earliest Times to Present Day Modern History from 1700 to 1900 Miscellaneous Items

Preface
Introduction	p. 1
Politics and Society
Politics in a Divided World: California, 1769-1840	p. 15
Farming and Politics: Oregon, 1835-1857	p. 41
"The Land for the Old Californian": Nevada, 1849-1864	p. 71
Personality, Ideology, and Political Culture
A New Regime: California, 1849	p. 101
Diversity and Gold Rush Democracy	p. 103
The Dilemmas of Democratic Freedom	p. 120
A Liberal Commonwealth: Oregon, 1857	p. 139
Nineteenth-Century Commonwealthmen	p. 140
Virtue and Interest	p. 172
Between Golden and Gilded Ages: Nevada, 1864	p. 189
The Old Californians	p. 191
The Corporation and the Individual	p. 211
History and Memory
Progress and Poverty: California, 1849-1885	p. 233
Crisis and Renewal: Oregon, 1857-1890	p. 269
Industry and Exodus: Nevada, 1864-1885	p. 313
Epilogue	p. 349
Appendixes	p. 353
Notes	p. 381
Index	p. 461
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Founding the Far West

California, Oregon, and Nevada, 1840-1890

At a Glance

Hardcover

Industry Reviews

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How to return your order

Defective items

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