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Showing papers in "Pacific Historical Review in 2010"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argues that a multicultural approach has not provided an adequate framework for understanding women and gender in the American West and argues that women historians must "decolonize" their narrative and our field through seriously considering the West as a colonial site.
Abstract: For over three decades, western women9s historians have been working not just to challenge male biases within western history scholarship but also to create a more multicultural inclusive narrative. Paradoxically, however, the overarching narrative of western women9s history continues to sideline women of color and to advance a triumphalist interpretation of white women in the West. This essay argues that a multicultural approach has not provided an adequate framework for understanding women and gender in the American West. Instead, western women historians must "decolonize" our narrative and our field through seriously considering the West as a colonial site. To do so, we must employ the tools and theories that scholars of gender and colonialism worldwide have developed to analyze other comparable colonial contexts and projects.

32 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors traces challenges to Mexicans9 legal and racial status by various groups, including federal bureaucrats, nativist organizations, and everyday citizens, tracing challenges to Mexico's legal and race status.
Abstract: This article traces challenges to Mexicans9 legal and racial status by various groups, including federal bureaucrats, nativist organizations, and everyday citizens. Early twentieth-century efforts to make Mexicans ineligible for U.S. citizenship, despite provisions in the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, focused on the premise that Mexicans were neither "black" nor "white"; interest groups and politicians both strove instead to categorize Mexicans as "Indian." These efforts intensified after the 1924 Immigration Act and two Supreme Court decisions, Ozawa v. United States (1922) and United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), which declared Japanese and Asian Indians ineligible for citizenship because they were not white. Underlying U.S. efforts to resolve Mexican immigration and citizenship issues was the ongoing problem of determining who could be considered white; this concern clashed with positive Mexican understandings of mestizaje.

28 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors highlight several interdisciplinary works about gender, race, and power in U.S. western women9s history and consider how these recent works are charting new pathways for future research.
Abstract: This essay highlights several interdisciplinary works about gender, race, and power in U.S. western history that utilize analytic tools generated by women9s studies and women9s history and considers how these recent works are charting new pathways for future research about U.S. western women9s history. The theory of intersectionality, articulated by black women9s studies, has been particularly useful in addressing the complexity of how gender, race, and power have informed women9s lives in the U.S. West. However, several of the scholars producing this exciting work do not identify or locate their work as U.S. western women9s history. One reason may be the existence of an "American western history imaginary," an ideological construct that currently dominates the field and scholarship. The essay addresses what is at stake in challenging this imaginary for U.S. western women9s history.

27 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors discuss the accomplishments and shortcomings of a quarter-century of western women's and gender history, suggesting future directions for the field and the authors differ in their assessments of efforts to achieve multicultural histories and to address relationships of power within women's history.
Abstract: The essays in this forum address the accomplishments and shortcomings of a quarter-century of western women's and gender history, suggesting future directions for the field. The authors differ in their assessments of efforts to achieve multicultural histories and to address relationships of power within western women's history, as well as about the impact of western women's history on western historical scholarship. This essay suggests that the differences in analysis, emphasis, and conclusions in the three essays that follow are only partly due to three authors' addressing different scholarly and popular discourses. Entrenched academic power relationships, conservative public politics, and the difficulty of imagining new narratives have all inhibited historians' efforts to interrogate power and disrupt relationships of domination. It is time to address these difficult and urgent tasks.

23 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
Julian Lim1
TL;DR: Using the testimonio of Manuel Lee Mancilla, a Chinese Mexican man born in Mexicali in 1921, the authors explores the experiences of the Chinese in northern Mexico in the early 1900s.
Abstract: Using the testimonio of Manuel Lee Mancilla, a Chinese Mexican man born in Mexicali in 1921, this article explores the experiences of the Chinese in northern Mexico in the early 1900s. It examines the conditions under which Chinese immigrants came to and helped build new borderland communities and simultaneously recovers the day-to-day relationships that were negotiated and nurtured there. Meaningful moments of Chinese Mexican cooperation emerged amid intense conflict and despite the anti-Chinese campaigns of the Mexican Revolution and the infamous Sonoran purges of the 1930s. Challenging static notions of ethnic and racial identities and relations, and analyzing the anti-Chinese movements in less monolithic terms, this article examines not only how Chinese and Mexicans weathered revolutionary violence and xenophobia but also the turbulent forces of U.S. capital and labor exploitation on both sides of the border.

17 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper examined the local and transnational dimensions of sports in Southern California through the activities of the Mexican Athletic Association of Southern California (MAASC) from the Great Depression to the end of World War II.
Abstract: This article examines the local and transnational dimensions of sports in Southern California through the activities of the Mexican Athletic Association of Southern California (MAASC) from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. This amateur athletic organization promoted sports in the barrios and colonias throughout Southern California and forged transnational ties with the Mexican government and its sports federation. MAASC and its related activities reflected two competing historical trajectories that have been subjects of debate in Chicano historiography. MAASC sports simultaneously reinvigorated transnational ties with Mexico that emphasized a Meexico de afuera identity and contributed to the making of a Mexican American identity that connected immigrants to Southern California and American society in general. Ultimately, both impulses helped to instill a new political confidence among MAASC members to challenge the Los Angeles Department of Playground and Recreation9s paternalistic approach toward the Mexican community.

9 citations




Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A re-examination of early Hawaiian-missionary contact to argue that Hawaiian and missionary women were powerful figures in this missionary and colonial drama is presented in this article, where the first company of American missionaries set sail for the Hawaiian Islands with the express intent of converting its inhabitants to Christianity.
Abstract: In October 1819 the first company of American missionaries set sail for the Hawaiian Islands with the express intent of converting its inhabitants to Christianity. The missionaries earnestly believed that they might provide Hawaiian Islanders with the dual gifts of civilization and salvation and were eager to set about the work of bestowing them. Missionaries were surprised to discover that Hawaiians had gifts of their own to bestow, interrupting the missionary agenda almost from the moment of their arrival. Exploring the unspoken and often symbolic language of gifts, this article offers a re-examination of early Hawaiian-missionary contact to argue that Hawaiian and missionary women——who situated themselves at the very center of the exchange of things——were powerful figures in this missionary and colonial drama.

6 citations




Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argued that the American ideal of the separation of church and state, which explicitly criticized the influence of State Shinto in pre-war Japan and was embodied in the Occupation9s Shinto Directive, ran counter to the promotion of Christianity to replace Shinto.
Abstract: American occupying forces had an unprecedented opportunity to establish Christianity in post-World War II Japan, but their efforts failed. This article argues that Gen. Douglas MacArthur9s efforts at Christianization failed because of a fundamental contradiction within the goals of the Occupation. On the one hand, MacArthur saw Christianity and American-style democratic institutions as inextricably linked and serving similar purposes, including fending off communism. On the other, the American ideal of the separation of church and state, which explicitly criticized the influence of State Shinto in pre-war Japan and was embodied in the Occupation9s Shinto Directive, ran counter to the promotion of Christianity to replace Shinto. This internal conflict eliminated one of the Occupation9s more promising avenues for Christianization——public education.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is argued that missionary physicians monitored and reported on Native Hawaiian depopulation (a result of introduced western diseases) while simultaneously advertising the islands' benefits to American consumptive, imperialists, and others.
Abstract: This article examines the activities and perspectives of nineteenth-century American missionary physicians in the Hawaiian Islands. The physicians' attitudes toward Hawaiian morbidity and depopulation are viewed in relation to the greater missionary community's role in the political transformation of the island nation. The article argues that missionary physicians monitored and reported on Native Hawaiian depopulation (a result of introduced western diseases) while simultaneously advertising the islands' benefits to American consumptives, imperialists, and others. Mission doctors also failed to respond effectively to the greatest epidemiological crisis Hawai'i had ever faced: a venereal scourge with a resulting blight of Native Hawaiian infertility. As a result of these and other factors, American hegemony in Hawai'i by midcentury was a foregone conclusion.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine a fundamental shift in ideas about development, from high modernism in the early twentieth century to environmental modernism after 1960, illustrated by the promotion and construction of the Libby Dam Project in the Canadian-American Kootenay River Basin.
Abstract: This article examines a fundamental shift in ideas about development, from high modernism in the early twentieth century to environmental modernism after 1960, illustrated by the promotion and construction of the Libby Dam Project in the Canadian-American Kootenay River Basin. In the 1940s Canadian and U.S. planners originally promoted the dam by stressing the rational conquest of nature through science and technology. When construction began in 1966, however, pressure from a growing environmental movement changed how planners designed and constructed the Libby Dam and its reservoir, Lake Koocanusa. The later planners implemented mitigation measures, "blended" the dam and reservoir into the landscape, and appropriated First Nations' symbols to make the project seem like a natural part of the Canadian-American Kootenay Basin. Thus, in both countries, planners reflected the shift from high modernism to environmental modernism.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors borrows the form of Martin Luther's famous "Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences" (also known as the 95 Theses), which sparked the Reformation, to launch both a critique of contemporary western historiography and a scholarly call to action.
Abstract: Scholars of the North American West have not realized the promise of gender and women9s history for the field. Many of the best recent books, articles, documentary films, and museum exhibits slight the insights of gender history, except in the inclusion of occasional female actors who are made to parade under the sign of gender. This essay borrows the form of Martin Luther9s famous "Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences" (also known as the 95 Theses), which sparked the Reformation, to launch both a critique of contemporary western historiography and a scholarly call to action. It advances 11 Theses that invite scholars to enter the gender historian9s version of the kingdom of heaven, where power and privilege are always visible and always interrogated.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For example, the American geologist James Dwight Dana as discussed by the authors was the first to hypothesize the underlying forces that created and unified this vast ocean basin as a whole, and during his four-year journey with the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838−1842), Dana developed a holistic view of geological systems throughout the Pacific, including those continental lands soon claimed by the United States as its Far West.
Abstract: While dozens of naturalists had examined discrete Pacific environments prior to the 1830s, the American geologist James Dwight Dana was the first to hypothesize the underlying forces that created and unified this vast ocean basin as a whole. During his four-year journey with the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838––1842), Dana developed a holistic view of geological systems throughout the Pacific, including those continental lands soon claimed by the United States as its Far West. But Dana9s innovative work on Pacific geology and his extra-continental reading of the Far West changed in the 1850s. Like other American explorer-geologists who found cause for reifying a continental geology, Dana9s work lost sight of the Pacific Basin and instead focused on the exceptional and spiritually preordained structure of American landforms.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examines the changing extent of the Cold War9s influence on popular American perceptions of goods made in Japan and finds that the American press initially depicted the Japanese economy as needing assistance and producing only cheap, inconsequential products, but as Japan9s economy began to recover in the mid 1950s and Japanese manufacturers produced better quality goods, concerns over competition revived racialized wartime rhetoric.
Abstract: This article examines the changing extent of the Cold War9s influence on popular American perceptions of goods made in Japan. Although the National Security Council recommended in 1948 that the United States rebuild Japan9s devastated economy to strengthen an anti-communist ally in East Asia (and America9s position there), U.S. merchants, consumers, manufacturers, and journalists did not consistently go along with this official economic policy. The American press initially depicted the Japanese economy as needing assistance and producing only cheap, inconsequential products, but as Japan9s economy began to recover in the mid-1950s and Japanese manufacturers produced better quality goods, concerns over competition revived racialized wartime rhetoric. Japan9s emergence as a successful exporter of high-end merchandise by the 1960s seemed to prove the strength of American-style free market capitalism.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The history of the Russian American Company (RAC) has attracted much attention in the last few decades as discussed by the authors, with many scholars trying to unravel the historical details about individuals, companies, and governments that related to the Russian-American Company.
Abstract: Many people have written about the history of the Russian-American Company (RAC), some for scholars, others for a lay audience. Numerous writers have been Americans and Europeans who have had access to the records of the RAC that are held in the U.S. National Archives. But more records-preserved in Russia-were rarely accessible to Western scholars until the end of the Cold War. Dr. Andrei V. Grineev is one of the leading authorities on the history of Russian America. In the past two decades he has published two monographs, ten chapters in the three-volume Istoriya Russkoi Ameriki [The History of Russian America], and seventy-five articles in Russian, English, and Japanese. He writes not just about the Europeans who settled in Russia9s transoceanic territories but also about Native Americans. Many of his works are unique in that he draws on both the ethnography and history of Native Americans. With regard to Russian America, he deals not only with the policies of governments and companies but with individuals as well. In pursuit of this task, Grineev has now written a book about everyone who had connections with Russian America. It contains more than 5,800 biographical sketches and was published in 2009. In the work below, he analyzes the writings of scholars who have tried to unravel historical details about individuals, companies, and governments that related to the Russian-American Company. This article was translated from Russian. Since a great deal of Russian literature is cited, it is important to understand the form of transliteration used with these titles. For a detailed description of the transliteration, please see the Translator9s Note in the appendix.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Aspenization is an inherently political term that by the 1980s had evolved into a code word for "selling out" in the American West and elsewhere, yet it is as much a refection of changes that happened to ski bums as they "grew up," or came of age, as it is a reflection of growth in a resort community as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: "Aspenization" is an inherently political term that by the 1980s had evolved into a code word for "selling out" in the American West and elsewhere, yet it is as much a refection of changes that happened to ski bums as they "grew up," or came of age, as it is a refection of growth in a resort community. When we look at the Aspenization of Aspen itself, or of Telluride, we are looking at stories about places that change, but we are also exploring how some people might change, too, as they both grow older and conceptualize and re-conceptualize what particular ages mean when associated with mountain-town lifestyles.