Showing papers in "Pacific Historical Review in 1986"

The Great Exception Revisited: Organized Labor and Politics in San Francisco and Los Angeles, 1870-1940

Abstract: In 1949, Carey McWilliams summarized, with one phrase, the character of organized labor in his adopted state: "It has been the total engagement of labor in California that has, from the beginning, given the California labor movement its distinctive character." He continued, "The labor struggle in the state has not been partial and limited but total and indivisible; all of labor pitted against all of capital." McWilliams's saga featured a cast of radicalized workers whose frequent and often violent confrontations with management contributed significantly to what he termed the state's "marked political instability."'I By focusing on dramatic

The Chinese Boycott of 1905-1906 Reconsidered: The Role of Chinese Americans

Abstract: "After the ball has started rolling downhill it will be difficult to tell when it will stop."' So wrote shipping magnate R. P. Schwerin to President Theodore Roosevelt on July 13, 1905, about a decision by Chinese merchants to boycott American goods coming into China. Three weeks later, a worried Reverend J. M. W. Farnham, a prominent Presbyterian missionary in Shanghai, wrote the President that the boycott "if carried out to its logical sequence will drive out every American and subsequently every foreigner."2 To a jubilant Chinese lawyer in Shanghai, however, the boycott was the "beginning of a new era." "If we succeed in getting justice from America now," he told a reporter, "we may then boycott the nation that forces opium down our throats, and the others that grab our provinces."3

The "Plundered Province" Thesis and the Recent Historiography of the American West

Abstract: More than a decade ago, K. Ross Toole asked whether time and the homogenizing forces of postwar America had altered the "old patterns, old curses, and old blessings" that afflicted so much of western life. His answer was unequivocal: There was a "fierce tenacity to old problems and old patterns"; they were deeply ingrained and "utterly basic." As for his beloved Montana, Toole observed that the state had "paid dearly" for its distance from markets, its dependence on raw materials, and the fact that a great percentage of its wealth was "not kept at home." Recently Richard Lamm and Michael McCarthy have refurbished that theme in The Angry West, a rambling and flawed, but provocative examination of the Intermountain West and its relation to the outside world. And

The Missouri News Monopoly and American Altruism in China: Thomas F.F. Millard, J. B. Powell, and Edgar Snow

Abstract: In the search for meaning in America's complex relations with China, scholars have looked at high-level government policy makers as well as unofficial groups, among them missionaries, businessmen, and journalists. Recognizing that American "images and attitudes [of Asia] are products of time, place and circumstances," studies have often tended to minimize the continuity in perceptions from one generation to the next.' Where generalizations have been made, the tendency during the past quarter century has been to see lofty rhetoric about helping China as a cloak for economic selfinterest abroad or, at least, as self-delusion about America's actual commitment to its idealism.2 One scholar recently has argued that

Clio, Clientage, Ethnocentrism, and War: Some Reflections

Abstract: In 1958, orjust about the time when I approached the end of my first decade as a professional historian and university teacher, Michael Oakeshott, the British scholar, published a perceptive essay on what it meant to be an historian. He labeled the writing of history a commonplace occupation and described it as "the product of a temperament which delights in the past, and for which the detachment, the immobility, the deadness and the irrelevance of the past are not defects to be removed, but blessed virtue to be enjoyed." He went on to attribute to history subtle feminine qualities evident in a special kind of woman whom the historian loves, "of whom he never tires, and whom he never expects to talk sense."'

The Limits of Influence: British Policy and American Expansion of the War in Korea

Abstract: Since 1945, with the possible exception of the brief period of the Cuban missile crisis, global conflict has never loomed more ominously on the horizon than during the months following China's massive intervention in Korea during the fall of 1950. The SinoAmerican clash brought intense pressure in the United States for punitive measures against China, pressure that would have been difficult for the Harry S. Truman administration to resist had United Nations troops been forced to evacuate the peninsula in the face of the Communist onslaught. Direct action against China, in turn, would have brought a major prospect of Soviet embroilment. In such circumstances, hostilities would have been likely to spread to Europe as well. Thus the Chinese move into Korea could easily have set off a train of events culminating in World War III. The Chinese confrontation with the United States in Korea was

Re-Visioning Mormon History

Abstract: In 1985, the Mormon History Association celebrated its twentieth anniversary. While nonpolemical, scholarly works had been written before that period, the organization's birth provides a convenient milestone in Mormon historiography.' Greater access to church archives, professional organization and activism, new documentary discoveries, a rapidly proliferating body of practitioners, and the rise of a number of new publication outlets have all combined to mark the past two decades as a period which might be characterized as "the explosion of Mormon history."2 Many incidents

The Collapse of Western Metal Mining: An Historical Epitaph

Abstract: With what seems an incredible abruptness, the last five years have witnessed the utter devastation of the West's oldest industry, metal mining. True, this notoriously unstable and cyclical industry has fallen before, as in the 1890s or the 1930s, but this time there seems no possibility that metal mining can recover to anything like its former status in the region. When one considers how important mining has been to the evolution of the western economy, and to the region's social and political order, it seems appropriate to point out what has happened and attempt to place it in historical perspective. First, the dimensions of the crisis: they are incredible. During the 1970s, energy conglomerates began buying many of the old western metal mining firms-ARCO acquired Anaconda, Sohio purchased Kennecott, Pennzoil bought the Duval Corporation, and so forth. They seemed like good investments, and the supercorporations promised to give them badly needed transfusions of capital. But alas, for reasons to which we shall return, the investments proved to be bad; and

The Pace of Their Own Lives: Teacher Training and the Life Course of Western Women

Abstract: Despite their importance in education, teachers have largely escaped the attention of scholars, and female teachers, with the exception of a few biographies and fewer monographs, have been ignored by historians of women's experiences. Scholars interested in women's participation in the labor force have neglected teachers because they were "white collar" rather than part of a potentially class-conscious group. On the other hand, those who study "professional" women defined them as doctors, lawyers, and professors, relegating elementary and secondary school teachers to some lesser position. Historians of education have examined pedagogy, literacy, and the spread of the public school, but have directed scant attention toward the teachers themselves, other than to note that teaching came to be a female occupation.'

American Wildlife Policy and Environmental Ideology: Poisoning Coyotes, 1939-1972

Abstract: In February 1972, as part of his environmental state of the union address, President Richard Nixon announced a ban on federal use of poison to kill predatory animals and promised to replace the old aim of killing off worthless "varmints" with a new one, saving both coyotes and sheep by reducing contact between them. His order, and the legislative and administrative action which ratified and extended it, was a major change in policy. Americans had long regarded predators as they had the forests and the Indianssomething to be cleared from the land to make way for civilization-and they had commonly used poison to get

Toward a Synthesis of the Political and Social History of the American West

Abstract: A spreading dissatisfaction with politically eviscerated social history is forcing historians to reevaluate their analytical strategies. A number of scholars have criticized the fragmented character of modern historiography and recommended renewed attention to the integrity of the past. In his 1981 presidential address to the American Historical Association, Bernard Bailyn expressed concern "about the sheer disarray and confusion in the proliferation of analytical historiography" and called for increased coordination among historical inquiries which "are ramifying in a hundred directions."' Even more recently, Peter Stearns, editor of the Journal of Social History, has urged us "to embrace the political, whether broadly or narrowly conceived, as part of the pursuit of the largest possible set of linkages in society." This requires, he ar-

American Atrocities in the Philippines: Some New Evidence

Abstract: The recent controversy between Gore Vidal and John M. Gates yields one indisputable conclusion: the Philippine War of 1898-1902 can still arouse passionate interest.' To be sure, some of this interest is politically motivated, bound up with concerns over American high-handedness in foreign affairs and with distant murmurs that the United States may fight for the Philippines again before century's end. But it was in a spirit of objectivity that Gates wrote to "encourage a more systematic look at the cost, in human life, of the PhilippineAmerican War."2 I do not propose to take that more systematic look at this time; however, until someone should undertake such a project it is surely not idle to study other aspects of the character of the fighting.

"Attorney for the Defense": Yamato Ichihashi and Japanese Immigration

Abstract: Yamato Ichihashi (1878-1965) was one of the first scholars of Japanese descent to teach at an American university. From 1913 to 1943 he was a professor of Japanese studies at Stanford University. Ichihashi is best known as the author of Japanese in the United States. Published in 1932, his book remains the standard work on Japanese immigration history.1 When it first appeared, a few reviewers characterized Ichihashi as playing "the role of the attorney for the defense."2 Japanese immigration had been a controversial political issue

Determination versus Drift: The Anglo-American Debate over the Trusteeship Issue, 1941-1945

Abstract: A key issue plaguing Anglo-American relations during World War II stemmed from differing views about the future of dependent peoples and the thorny problem of colonialism. Some Americans, notably President Franklin D. Roosevelt, insisted that "independence" was the goal for all dependent peoples, while Prime Minister Winston Churchill reflected the British view that "self-government"-which allowed for a loose association, or commonwealth of states-should be the proper goal. Of course, neither the American nor British leader recognized any need to consult the diverse groups arbitrarily lumped together under the category "dependent peoples" about their wishes and dreams for the future. Americans voices frequently assailed the evils of colonialism, or rather dark American perceptions of European-style colonialism. Since his views on the subject were well known, Churchill served as a lightning rod for American criticisms. On the other hand, British officials were often irritated by what they considered unfounded American allegations. Recognizing the overriding need for Anglo-American harmony,

Women on the Panama Trail to California, 1849-1869

Abstract: The Panama Trail was a major artery to the California frontier, but the westering women who followed it have not received the degree of attention accorded to women who traveled the overland routes in North America.' This essay seeks to correct that oversight by examining the experiences of female migrants as described in the writings of two dozen women who chose the fast, but often treacherous route across the Isthmus of Panama between its opening in 1849 and its decline after 1869 when the newly completed transcontinental railway offered a quicker, cheaper way to reach California.2

The Making of a Cultural Rebel: Carey McWilliams, 1924-1930

Abstract: Consider that map's principal intersections: literary criticism, as found in his Ambrose Bierce: A Biography, in the 1920s; political reportage, as in Factories in the Field, in the 1930s; books on social and ethnic minorities, as in Brothers Under the Skin, Prejudice, A Mask for Privilege, and North From Mexico, in the 1940s. And there are still his almost indelible etchings-his Baedekers-as a regionalist. Southern California Country and Calfornia:

Crime in California: Using State and Local Archives for Crime Research

Abstract: During the past decade crime in America has increasingly attracted the attention of serious historical researchers. Using sophisticated statistical analyses, social historians, centering their research on cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Detroit, and Columbus, Ohio, have offered new dimensions in understanding crime during the nineteenth century. Since these studies focus primarily on urban crime, they tend to ignore rural criminal behavior and also fail to use primary sources to full advantage.' An exception to this general