Alternative Wests

2017 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-17
Author(s):  
Andrew C. Isenberg ◽  
Thomas Richards
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
American West ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
Significant Extent ◽  
North American West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Caribbean

The mid-nineteenth century territorial growth of the United States was complex and contradictory. Not only did Mexico, Britain, and Native Americans contest U.S. territorial objectives; so, too, did many within the United States and in some cases American western settlers themselves. The notion of manifest destiny reflects few of these complexities. The authors argue that manifest destiny was a partisan idea that emerged in a context of division and uncertainty intended to overawe opponents of expansion. Only in the early twentieth century, as the United States had consolidated its hold on the North American West and was extending its power into the Caribbean and Pacific, did historians begin to describe manifest destiny as something that it never was in the nineteenth century: a consensus. To a significant extent, historians continue to rely on the idea to explain U.S. expansion. The authors argue for returning a sense of context and contingency to the understanding of mid-nineteenth-century U.S. expansion.

South Asian Migration, Settlement, and Sociopolitical Incorporation on the North American West Coast

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 85-108
Author(s):  
Prema Kurien
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Asian ◽  
West Coast ◽  
American West ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Migration Patterns ◽  
North American West ◽  
The North ◽  
Asian Migration

There are large South Asian settlements in the larger Vancouver region of British Columbia in Canada and in Northern and Central California (from Yuba City to Fresno) in the United States. While the early migration patterns of Sikhs and Hindus to these two areas were similar, they subsequently diverged and the South Asian settlements in the two regions now exhibit very different profiles. This resource paper summarizes and analyzes the literature on factors shaping the migration, settlement, and incorporation patterns of Asian immigrants in these two regions. I argue that the parallels in early South Asian migration patterns to the North American West Coast were due to similarities in the economic and social profile of these regions, Canadian and U.S. policies toward Asian immigrants, and easy movement between Canada and the United States. The divergence between the two regions took place over time largely as an outcome of changes in regional characteristics (e.g., the development of Silicon Valley), differences in the group characteristics and networks of Sikhs and Hindus, and an increasing divergence in Canadian and U.S. immigration regulations (e.g., differences in family reunification, refugee, and H1-B visa policies). The final section discusses how these settlement patterns have led to differences in the identity formation and sociopolitical incorporation of Sikhs and Hindus in the two regions.

Deafness and Ethnic Identity: The Idea of a Deaf State and its Resonances with American Exceptionalism and Frontier Ideology

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-90
Author(s):  
Marion Rana
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Deaf Identity ◽  
American Nation

Abstract This article focuses on the nineteenth century as a pivotal time for the development of a Deaf identity in the United States and examines the way John Jacob Flournoy’s idea of a “Deaf-Mute Commonwealth” touches upon core themes of American culture studies and history. In employing pivotal democratic ideas such as egalitarianism, liberty, and self-representation as well as elements of manifest destiny such as exceptionalism and the frontier ideology in order to raise support for a Deaf State, the creation and perpetuation of a Deaf identity bears strong similarities to the processes of American nation-building. This article will show how the endeavor to found a Deaf state was indicative of the separationist and secessionist movements in the United States at that time, and remains relevant to Deaf group identity today.

Poor Lo

Jockomo ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 53-74
Author(s):  
Shane Lief ◽  
John McCusker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Mardi Gras ◽  
Wild West Shows ◽  
Wild West

While based on local families expressing their blended Native and African legacies, the development of the Mardi Gras Indian cultural system was also shaped by the stereotyped notion of the “American Indian.” Throughout the nineteenth century, as the United States expanded westward across the continent, theatrical and musical productions increasingly incorporated stereotypes of Native Americans, sometimes appearing in Wild West shows. This fell within a larger pattern of minstrelsy, a form of entertainment based on ethnic caricatures especially popular at that time. This chapter examines how minstrelsy, including the Wild West shows, influenced local enactments of “Indianness” in New Orleans. Conventional historiography has often seen the Wild West shows as the point of origin for Mardi Gras Indian traditions. This historical axiom is dispelled, however, and the nineteenth century entertainment industry is instead revealed as a phenomenon which reinforced previously existing cultural practices.

Kenrick and the Paulists: A Conflict of Structures and Personalities

1969 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-105
Author(s):  
John P. Marschall
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
Religious Congregation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Catholic Church

In spite of the nativism that agitated the United States during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church experienced a noticeable drift of native American converts from other denominations. Between 1841 and 1857 the increased number of converts included a significant sprinkling of Protestant ministers. The history of this movement, which had its paradigm in the Oxford Movement, will be treated more in detail elsewhere. The purpose of this essay is simply to recount the attempt by several converts to establish a religious congregation of men dedicated to the Catholic apostolate among native Americans.

Rethinking United States–Caribbean relations: towards a new mode of trans-territorial governance

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANTHONY PAYNE
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
The North ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Different Order

United States–Caribbean relations over the period of the last thirty or forty years have rarely—if ever—been analysed in a thoroughly satisfying way. It is a strange omission in the international relations literature given the proximity of the United States to the Caribbean, and vice versa. But the fact is that most accounts of the relationship have fallen prey to a powerful, but ultimately misleading, mythology by which small, poor, weak, dependent entities in the Caribbean have either created trouble for, or alternatively been confronted by, the ‘colossus to the north’ that is the United States in whose ‘backyard’ they unfortunately have to reside. Virtually all analysts of the US–Caribbean relationship have thus drawn a picture marked at heart by the notion of an inherently unequal struggle between forces of a different order and scale. Within this broad metaphor the only major difference of interpretation has reflected the competing theories of power in the international system developed by the realist and structuralist schools.

scholarly journals Hydrodynamics of the Caribbean Low-Level Jet and Its Relationship to Precipitation

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 1477-1494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry H. Cook ◽  
Edward K. Vizy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Caribbean Basin ◽  
Low Level ◽  
The North ◽  
South Central ◽  
Central United States ◽  
Low Level Jet ◽  
The Caribbean

Abstract The easterly Caribbean low-level jet (CLLJ) is a prominent climate feature over the Intra-America Seas, and it is associated with much of the water vapor transport from the tropical Atlantic into the Caribbean Basin. In this study, the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) is analyzed to improve the understanding of the dynamics of the CLLJ and its relationship to regional rainfall variations. Horizontal momentum balances are examined to understand how jet variations on both diurnal and seasonal time scales are controlled. The jet is geostrophic to the first order. Its previously documented semidiurnal cycle (with minima at about 0400 and 1600 LT) is caused by semidiurnal cycling of the meridional geopotential height gradient in association with changes in the westward extension of the North Atlantic subtropical high (NASH). A diurnal cycle is superimposed, associated with a meridional land–sea breeze (solenoidal circulation) onto the north coast of South America, so that the weakest jet velocities occur at 1600 LT. The CLLJ is present throughout the year, and it is known to vary in strength semiannually. Peak magnitudes in July are related to the seasonal cycle of the NASH, and a second maximum in February is caused by heating over northern South America. From May through September, zonal geopotential gradients associated with summer heating over Central America and Mexico induce meridional flow. The CLLJ splits into two branches, including a southerly branch that connects with the Great Plains low-level jet (GPLLJ) bringing moisture into the central United States. During the rest of the year, the flow remains essentially zonal across the Caribbean Basin and into the Pacific. A strong (weak) CLLJ is associated with reduced (enhanced) rainfall over the Caribbean Sea throughout the year in the NARR. The relationship with precipitation over land depends on the season. Despite the fact that the southerly branch of the CLLJ feeds into the meridional GPLLJ in May through September, variations in the CLLJ strength during these months do not impact U.S. precipitation, because the CLLJ strength is varying in response to regional-scale forcing and not to changes in the large-scale circulation. During the cool season, there are statistically significant correlations between the CLLJ index and rainfall over the United States. When the CLLJ is strong, there is anomalous northward moisture transport across the Gulf of Mexico into the central United States and pronounced rainfall increases over Louisiana and Texas. A weak jet is associated with anomalous westerly flow across the southern Caribbean region and significantly reduced rainfall over the south-central United States. No connection between the intensity of the CLLJ and drought over the central United States is found. There are only three drought summers in the NARR period (1980, 1988, and 2006), and the CLLJ was extremely weak in 1988 but not in 1980 or 2006.

scholarly journals Black Cowboys In the American West: A Historiographical Review

1997 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
David Goldstein-Shirley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
American West ◽  
The United States ◽  
Half Century ◽  
History Texts ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Few subjects in the ethnic experience of the United States are as fraught with mythology and misinformation as black cowboys. Although absent from most classic history texts of the American West, black cowboys probably constituted about a quarter of the working cowboys in the nineteenth century, although q uantitative data to establish a number are lacking. This essay reviews the historiography of black cowboys published during the last half-century, noting how much of it is marred either by glossing over the presence of black cowboys or by credulously repeating estimates of their numbers established by earlier work. The essay speculates whether such problematic scholarship stems from unacknowledged prejudice among mainstream historians or from carelessness and calls for more and improved scholarly attention to the role of African American cowboys in the American West.

Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Nelson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Irish Immigrants ◽  
Full Independence ◽  
The Caribbean

This is a book about Irish nationalism and how Irish nationalists developed their own conception of the Irish race. The book begins with an exploration of the discourse of race—from the nineteenth-century belief that “race is everything” to the more recent argument that there are no races. It focuses on how English observers constructed the “native” and Catholic Irish as uncivilized and savage, and on the racialization of the Irish in the nineteenth century, especially in Britain and the United States, where Irish immigrants were often portrayed in terms that had been applied mainly to enslaved Africans and their descendants. Most of the book focuses on how the Irish created their own identity—in the context of slavery and abolition, empire, and revolution. Since the Irish were a dispersed people, this process unfolded not only in Ireland, but in the United States, Britain, Australia, South Africa, and other countries. Many nationalists were determined to repudiate anything that could interfere with the goal of building a united movement aimed at achieving full independence for Ireland. But others, including men and women who are at the heart of this study, believed that the Irish struggle must create a more inclusive sense of Irish nationhood and stand for freedom everywhere. The book pays close attention to this argument within Irish nationalism, and to the ways it resonated with nationalists worldwide, from India to the Caribbean.

Introduction

2012 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Torsten Feys
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
The North ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
The North Atlantic

Why do we need another study on European mass migration to the United States during the long nineteenth century at a time when many historians are encouraging a shift away from an Atlantic and modern focus that has long dominated the sub-discipline?1 The answer is that we need such a study because one recurring question remains unanswered: how did the migrant trade evolve with the introduction of steamships and influence the relocation of approximately thirty-five million people across the North Atlantic during the long nineteenth century? More than half a century ago, Maldwyn Jones, Frank Thistlewaite and Rolf Engelsing drew attention to the fact that transatlantic migration was determined by trade routes....

Seeking Influence Abroad

2020 ◽  
pp. 209-253
Author(s):  
Atul Kohli
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Central America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
Pacific Asia ◽  
The Caribbean

Born an anticolonial nation, the United States burst upon the global scene as an imperial power at the end of the nineteenth century. This chapter analyzes the American expansion into the Caribbean, Central America, and Pacific Asia. When the United States became a major industrial power in the late nineteenth century, it sought profit and power overseas, especially new economic opportunities. The United States experimented with colonialism but settled on creating stable but subservient regimes in peripheral countries as the main mechanism of control. Benefits to the United States included gains in trade, opportunities for foreign investments, and profitable loans. Countries under US influence, including the Philippines, Cuba, and Nicaragua, experienced some economic growth but became commodity exporters with sharp inequalities and poor-quality governments.

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