Showing papers in "Pacific Historical Review in 2002"

The Imperial Republic: A Comparison of the Insular Territories under U.S. Dominion after 1898

Abstract: The doctrine of incorporation, as elaborated in legal debates and legitimated by the U.S. Supreme Court, excluded the inhabitants of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam from the body politic of the United States on the basis of their cultural differences from dominant European American culture. However, in spite of their shared legal status as unincorporated territories, the U.S. Congress established different governments that, although adaptations of continental territorial governments, were staffed largely with appointed imperial administrators. In contrast, Hawai9i, which had experienced a long period of European American settlement, received a government that followed the basic continental model of territorial government. Thus, the distinction between the incorporated and unincorporated territories corresponded to the limits of European American settlement. However, even among the unincorporated territories, cultural evaluations were important in determining the kinds of rule. The organic act for Puerto Rico provided for substantially more economic and judicial integration with the United States than did the organic act for the Phillippines. This followed from the assessment that Puerto Rico might be culturally assimilated while the Phillippines definitely could not. Moreover, religion was the criterion for determining different provincial governments within the Phillippines. In Guam, the interests of the naval station prevailed over all other considerations. There, U.S. government officials considered the local people to be hospitable and eager to accept U.S. sovereignty, while they largely ignored the local people9s language, culture, and history. In Guam, a military government prevailed.

Empire and the Origins of Twentieth-Century Migration from Mexico to the United States

Abstract: Preamble In this article we show how the twentieth-century appearance of a Chicano minority population in the United States originated from the subordination of the nation of Mexico to U.S. economic and political interests. We argue that, far from being marginal to the course of modern U.S. history, the Chicano minority, an immigrant people, stands at the center both of that history and of a process of imperial expansionism that originated in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and that continues today.

Jim Crow downunder? African American encounters with White Australia, 1942-1945

Abstract: Between 1941 and 1945, as the U.S. military machine sent millions of Americans--and American culture--around the world, several thousand African Americans spent time in Australia. Armed with little knowledge of Australian racial values and practices, black Americans encoutered a nation whose long-standing commitment to the principle of "White Australia" appeared to rest comfortably with the segregative policies commonly associated with the American South. Nonetheless, while African Americans

Ireland's Furthest Shores: Irish Immigrant Settlement in Nineteenth-Century California and Eastern Australia

Abstract: An open access copy of this article is available and complies with the copyright holder/publisher conditions. Published as Pacific Historical Review 71 (1), 59-90. (2002) by University of California Press. Copying and permissions notice: Authorization to copy this content beyond fair use (as specified in Sections 107 and 108 of the U. S. Copyright Law) for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by [the Regents of the University of California/on behalf of the Sponsoring Society] for libraries and other users, provided that they are registered with and pay the specified fee via Rightslink® on [Caliber (http://caliber.ucpress.net/)] or directly with the Copyright Clearance Center, http://www.copyright.com."

Kissinger, Ford, and Congress: The Very Bitter End in Vietnam

Abstract: Although not elected to the office, Gerald Ford nonetheless had the opportunity to change the nation9s course in Vietnam when he assumed the presidency in August 1974. He did not do so, leaving the burden of ending the war there to the U.S. Congress. Contrary to what some policymakers and historians have subsequently argued, Congress did not sell out a healthy, viable South Vietnamese government to the communists in 1974––1975. Instead, the senators and representatives who voted to reduce, not cut off, military and economic assistance to the government of Nguyen Van Thieu made the correct and proper decision in the face of that regime9s obviously untenable nature and the overwhelming desire of the American people to curtail support for it. Rather than working out a plan to end the war and remove those South Vietnamese who had worked with the Americans over the years, the Ford administration, led by the President himself, his Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, and Graham Martin, the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, chose to pursue a deliberate policy of denial, one designed to place the blame for the loss of South Vietnam on the shoulders of Congress. The resulting tragedy left thousands of Vietnamese to face life as the clear losers in a civil war.

Repositioning Indianness: Native American Organizations in Portland, Oregon, 1959––1975

Abstract: This article examines the processes of community building among American Indians who migrated to Portland, Oregon, in the decades following World War II, contextualized within a larger movement of Indians to the cities of the United States and shifts in government relations with Indian people. It argues that, during the 1960s, working-and middle-class Indians living in Portland came together and formed groups that enabled them to cultivate "Indianness" or to "be Indian" in the city. As the decade wore on, Indian migration to Portland increased, the social problems of urban Indians became more visible, and a younger generation emerged to challenge the leadership of Portland9s established Indian organizations. Influenced by both their college educations and a national Indian activist movement, these new leaders promoted a repositioning of Indianness, taking Indian identity as the starting point from which to solve urban Indian problems. By the mid-1970s, the younger generation of college-educated Indians gained a government mandate and ascended to the helm of Portland9s Indian community. In winning support from local, state, and federal officials, these leaders reflected fundamental changes under way in the administration of U.S. Indian affairs not only in Portland, but also across the country.

In Search of a Panacea: Japan-Korea Rapprochement and America's "Far Eastern Problems"

Abstract: The United States had three challenges in Asia in the mid-1960s: a hostile China, an assertive Japan, and a faltering South Vietnam. The Johnson administration9s solution to these problems was to promote the normalizing of relations between its two vital Asian allies, Japan and South Korea. The two countries had refused to recognize each other diplomatically since the end of Japan9s colonial rule over Korea after World War II. The acrimonious relations between Seoul and Tokyo weakened the containment wall in Northeast Asia while depriving Korea of Japanese investments, loans, and markets. These problems forced the United States to commit extensive military and economic assistance to Korea. As expected, a Tokyo-Seoul rapprochment buttressed the West9s bulwark against communist powers in the region and hindered a potential Beijing-Tokyo reconciliation. It opened the road for Japan9s economic penetration into Korea and enabled Seoul to receive Tokyo9s help in economic development. Reassured by the friendship between Korea and Japan, Washington forged an alliance with Seoul in the Vietnam War. Between 1965 and 1973 Korea dispatched 300,000 soldiers in Vietnam, making it the second largest foreign power in support of Saigon. The Korea-Japan rapprochment proved to be a powerful remedy for America9s problems in Asia.

Are We Chimerical in this Opinion? Visions of a Pacific Railroad and Westward Expansion before 1845

Abstract: Although he deserves credit for promoting a transcontinental railroad as early as 1845, Asa Whitney may better represent the culmination of a discourse that had begun over twenty years earlier. Visions of a Pacific railroad originated in the 1820s and evolved into a widely debated issue by the 1830s. From the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, early promoters not only envisioned railroads to Oregon but also into the Mexican provinces of California and Sonora——suggesting that such visions represented an important element of U.S. expansionism. Relying on romantically charged language, advocates ignored geographical and political realities and wedded their vision with a faith in railroad technology that was yet in its infancy. Wishing to lay claim to the perceived riches of the Asian trade, advocates described the Pacific railroad as a commercial venture, preceding actual settlement. Northerners generally promoted routes to Oregon, while the South sought California and Sonora as destinations, but these contending visions should not be confused with the sectionalism that characterized the debates over the railroad during the 1850s. Instead, the differences present in the discourse of the 1830s largely reflect civic boosterism. While scholars have noted these earlier visionaries, this article analyzes their ideas and places them in the context of U.S. expansion to the Pacific.

Phoebe Apperson Hearst's Gospel of Wealth, 1883––1901

Abstract: In response to the critics who charged that his money was tainted, Andrew Carnage devised an ideology that came to be known as the "Gospel of Wealth." Carnegie's "gospel" mostly helped the ambitious, young white men. But wealthy women like Phoebe Apperson Hearst also played a major role in redefining the "Gospel of Wealth." The goal of this article is to define and explain Hearst's "gospel" and show how it made her the complementary equal of such men as Carnegie. Hearst's "gospel" declared that leisure women had a sacred duty to give to causes, especially progressive education and reform, that would benefit their communities and help those excluded or marginalized from America's mainstream, as well as advance these women's careers as reformers and political leaders. While Hearst's approach helped those left out by Carnegie's style of philanthropy, namely women, it also was a reasoned but intuitive plan to advance her career and status, silence her critics, obtain and wield the power to define political issues, and realize reform goals. As such, Phoebe Apperson Hearst became the complementary equal of prominent, powerful men like Andrew Carnegie.

You're a Better Filipino than I Am, John Wayne: World War II, Hollywood, and U.S.-Philippines Relations

Abstract: Between 1939 and 1945 several Hollywood studios produced significant films set in the war-torn Philippines, including Bataan (MGM, 1943), So Proudly We Hail (Paramount, 1943),and Back to Bataan (RKO,1943). Although these films immediately preceded Philippines independence in 1946, they do not position the Philippines as a soon-to-be autonomous nation. Instead, these films reaffirm, and even celebrate, the unequal colonial power relationship that marked the history of U.S. occupation of the archipelago. A careful reading of these films, which is the subject of this article, reveals the stamina of this colonial ideology (colonial uplift, tutelage, and nation-building) that legitimized U.S. colonial rule in the Phillapines and dates back to the turn of the century. What the perpetuation of this ideology suggests is the postwar neocolonial relationship between the two nations that U.S. government officials anticipated. This revised neocolonial ideology is expressed through the racialized and gendered images of Filipino characters and their interaction with U.S. American characters. The U.S. government attempted to control such images as part of its wartime propaganda, but had to rely on the voluntary compliance of the major Hollywood studios. While the Filipinos in films like Back to Bataan , made at the war's end, appear to challenge the racist stereotypes of prior films, they are re-inscribed by a neocolonial form of U.S. supremacy—— framed as wartime U.S. guidance and Filipino dependency.

Mirages over the Andes: Peru, France, the United States, and Military Jet Procurement in the 1960s

Abstract: On May 5, 1967, U.S. National Security Adviser Walter W. Rostow briefed President Lyndon B. Johnson that Peru had contracted to buy twelve Mirage 5 supersonic fighter jets from France, "despite our repeated warnings of the consequences." The first planes were delivered a year later, prompting the United States to withhold development loans from Peru as directed by the Conte-Long Amendment to the 1968 Foreign Assistance Appropriations Bill. Peru was the first Latin American country (with the exception of Cuba) to equip its air force with supersonic combat aircraft, and its decision spurred a dramatic qualitative and financial escalation in regional arms procurement, thereby defeating Washington9s effort to control the latter. The CIA qualified the "Mirage affair" as the "most serious issue" in U.S.-Peruvian relations at the time. The event demonstrated the growing desire of Peru and other Latin American countries to loosen the ties that bound them to Washington and exemplified France9s drive to depolarize world politics during the Cold War. Demanded by the Peruvian military establishment, the Mirage deal also announced the golpe of October 1968 that ended the presidency of Fernando Belauunde Terry and ushered in the reformist military dictatorship of Juan Velasco Alvarado. In addition, it complicated relations between the White House, Congress, and the press in the antagonistic context of the Vietnam War. Finally, it further illustrated the diplomatic and economic stakes of military aircraft sales, as well as the appeal of the airplane as a symbol of national sovereignty and modernity.

"A Dynamic, Not a Static Conception": The Conservation Thought of Roderick Haig-Brown

Abstract: As the foremost conservationist in British Columbia from the late 1940s to the late 1960s, the internationally known fishing writer, magistrate, and naturalist Roderick Haig-Brown (1908-1976) fought conservation battles and promoted ecological ideas during a period of aggressive industrial expansion into the province9sresource frontier. This article explores Haig-Brown9s conservation ideas and argues that they defy the often sharp categorization by historians of the philosophies underlying conservation and environmentalism. It identifies and discusses three phases in his conservation thought: the modern sportsman ethic, critical resourcism, and ethical conservation. Although he was born and raised in England, Haig-Brown developed his philosophy in the particular social, cultural, political, and environmental context of the mid-century Pacific Northwest. Subsequent readings of Haig-Brown as simply a romantic conservative ignore the dynamic quality of his ideas as they changed during his career. Like the American ecologist Aldo Leopold, Haig-Brown transcends the earlier, utilitarian conservation ideas and the ethical, nonmaterial values associated with environmentalism. This examination of his ideas suggests that the analysis of these movements as ideologically distinct or linearly developed obscures the importance of local variants and historical context.

Newlands, Old Lands: Native American Labor, Agrarian Ideology, and the Progressive-Era State in the Making of the Newlands Reclamation Project, 1902––1926

Abstract: Historical interpretations focusing on the development of irrigated agricultural communities in the early twentiethcentury American West have consistently repeated the neat division between "family" and "industrial" modes of production. However, these distinctions collapse when one recognizes that the seasonal demand for harvest labor could not be met from within the smallholders' households. Transient labor, as well as year-round wage work by property-less workers, appears to have been the rule even on the irrigated West's family farms. In the case of the Newlands Reclamation Project, dispossessed Native Americans provided essential labor, ensuring the nominal success of this initial Reclamation Service project during the first three decades of the twentieth century. In Nevada, Paiute and Shoshone laborers provided a local and low-cost work force. This irrigation culture could not avoid the pitfalls of capitalist agriculture that relied upon the dispossession of Indian lands and resources and the coerced labor of an underclass of Indian workers. While Paiute and Shoshone labor was certainly coerced, there were limits. This article demonstrates the degree to which these people maintained an autonomous community and culture. Drawing on precolonial roots, Native North American communities shared in the challenges and creative adaptations exhibited by indigenous communities globally in response to settler capitalism.

"Well-Thinking Men and Women": The Battle for the White Act and the Meaning of Conservation in the 1920s

Abstract: Historians have long debated the fate of the conservation movement during the 1920s. While all seem to agree that a sharp divide existed between conservationists and anti-conservationists, they have differed over whether conservation entered a Dark Age during these years, whether it was sustained by private organizations and radical amateurs, or signaled an era of continuity in relations between industry and the state. The battle over the 1924 White Act, a piece of federal legislation designed to protect dwindling Alaska salmon stocks, suggests that all these conclusions deserve reevaluation. While conservation hardly disappeared during the Republican ascendancy, it did undergo important changes as federal officials emphasized production-oriented concerns for efficiency over socially oriented concerns about equity. The heated debate that erupted over the White Act bared significant differences in how Americans defined the meaning of conservation at the time. The resulting policies, as many historians have noted, often benefited large producers over smallholders while accomplishing little in solving the underlying problems of waste and depletion.

Salt Lake City and Stereotypes of the Russians

Abstract: In the spring of 2001, when I was in Moscow on a Fulbright grant, I visited the Armed Forces Museum. In an outdoor courtyard that was basically a graveyard for outmoded weaponry, I saw an American Pershing II missile, one of a class of military hardware that had been aimed at the Soviets during the height of the second phase of the Cold War. It stood beside Russian ICBMs, tanks, and artillery pieces, testimony to the hostility that had recently marked the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Pershing II missile, part of a weapons system that went nowhere in conflict but had been decommissioned and dismantled in 1987, wound up in Moscow in peace. In that year, the United States and the Soviet Union made diplomatic progress toward nuclear arms control. The previous year at the summit conference at Reykjavik, Iceland, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had tried to persuade President Ronald Reagan to agree to a complete renunciation of nuclear weapons. The attempt foundered on ReaganOs love of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), but, after much maneuvering, Gorbachev did persuade Reagan to agree to the Intermediate Nuclear Forces