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The American West and the World THE AMERICAN WEST AND THE WORLD The American West and the World provides a synthetic introduction to the trans- national history of the American West. Drawing from the insights of recent scholarship, Janne Lahti recenters the history of the U.S. West in the global contexts of empires and settler colonialism, discussing exploration, expansion, migration, violence, intimacies, and ideas. Lahti examines established subfields of Western scholarship, such as borderlands studies and transnational histories of empire, as well as relatively unexplored connections between the West and geographically nonadjacent spaces. Lucid and incisive, The American West and the World firmly situates the historical West in its proper global context. Janne Lahti is Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Helsinki and the editor of American Studies in Scandinavia. THE AMERICAN WEST AND THE WORLD Transnational and Comparative Perspectives Janne Lahti NEW YORK AND LONDON First published 2019 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Janne Lahti to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-18733-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-18734-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-64321-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra CONTENTS Acknowledgments vi Introduction: The American West as Global History 1 PART I Global Convergences 13 1 Shared Worlds 15 2 Settler Revolutions 45 PART II Global Circulations 83 3 Violence 85 4 Intimacies of Empires 116 5 Imperial Eyes 147 Epilogue 181 Index 185 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS When looking back and reflecting on how this book came to be, I want to start by showing my appreciation to my parents, Jouko and Marjatta Lahti. It was they, after all, who introduced me to great Western movies such as Rio Bravo, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly when I was growing up in 1980s Finland. And it was they who put up with my often noisy and frequently disruptive plays of “cowboys and Indians.” And it was they as well who, back then, financed my seemingly endless appetite for Western comics and films. I am sure they had little idea of what it would all lead up to. Neither did I. As I went to college, got my PhD, and made myself a professional historian specializing in the American West, they have been per- haps a bit surprised and oftentimes somewhat puzzled by what exactly I do. But they have also shown true support and avid interest in my career choices, which I sincerely appreciate. Academically, this book was generously supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. Its three-year postdoc fellowship provided much-valued time for research and writing at the University of Helsinki. There were several people who read parts of the manuscript or helped me in some other way as this book was in the works. I want to express my gratitude to Lance Blyth, Sebastian Conrad, Margaret Jacobs, James Leiker, Benjamin Madley, Sheila McManus, Roger Nichols, Markku Peltonen, Cynthia Culver Prescott, Robert Wooster, and David Wrobel. At Routledge, this project actually started as a proposal to put together a reader of relevant scholarly articles and then developed into what it is now, a monograph. Kimberly Guinta was instrumental in getting this project off the ground. She put a lot of faith in me and in this book, for which I am very grateful. In fact, it was her patience and guidance that got me to write this. I also want to thank Jack Censer for his beneficial feedback early on, as well as Margo Irvin. At present, Eve Mayer and Ted Meyer have Acknowledgments vii proven friendly and supportive to work with. They have exhibited the full- est confidence in this book, which is something this author needs and values. Finally, it is time to remember what I, after all, need to be most thankful of. My wife Sanna is a true gem, and I should probably let her know that more frequently. Our two teenaged children Sofia and Juho have had to deal with my Western enthusiasm for a number of years now. They have listened aptly to my frequent ramblings about this or that historical subject. They have also proven amicable travel companions during the long car rides and endless walks throughout the West and its wonderful towns, nature, and historic sites. I hope all this has provided them some perspective on life and on the value and impor- tance of history in our interconnected, globalizing world. INTRODUCTION The American West as Global History I first visited the trans-Mississippi American West as a 23-year-old college stu- dent and have subsequently spent extended time (over three years in all) there as a student and as a scholar. Yet in many ways the West has been part of my life much longer. As a young boy growing up in a small, predominantly working- class, town in southern Finland in the 1980s, I consumed piles of Western comics, pulp novels, and movies (on VHS, of course). What’s more I spent countless hours outdoors playing “cowboys and Indians,” using my toy Colts, Winchesters, and bow and arrows. When the weather turned sour, as it so often does where I grew up, I staged Western holdups, shootouts, and Indian fights in the comfort of my room. I remember owning little replica stagecoaches, railroad cars and tracks, and quite a few dwellings – a saloon, an army fort, a sheriff’s office, and a mercantile store, all made of wood, not plastic, spring to mind. I also had dozens of figurine cowboys, soldiers, and Indians to play with. In hindsight, the variety of Western-themed toys and apparel available in Finland in the 1980s seems striking as one is less and less likely to stumble on any in today’s department stores and toy shops. To a kid like me, the contemporary world looked pretty uninspiring and very serious. The Cold War was an all-too-real danger, and it was intensively present in the everyday lives of everyday people as Finland teetered between the communist East and the capitalist West. In contrast, the American West signaled colorful adventure with its Indians, buffalos, cowboys, and gunsling- ers. John Wayne, Randolph Scott, and Clint Eastwood made a lasting – and, in retrospect, quite possibly harmful – impression on a youngster trying to understand the world and figure out what it meant to become a man. So did the massively popular (in Europe, that is) Western comics Lucky Luke and Tex Willer. I only realized much later that Lucky Luke was actually a French-Belgian product and that Tex Willer came from Italy, and that neither had made much 2 Introduction of a splash in the actual West. It also hit me afterward that the early Westerns of Clint Eastwood were similarly “made in Europe.” In school, I frequently stumbled on the West. I learned that thousands of Finns and millions of other Europeans had moved there. Many of those who became settlers in the West not only took the land and built their families, communities, and legacies there but also kept in touch and visited the “old country.” More often than one would think, they also returned for good. This was the option my paternal great-grandfather took (luckily for me, as other- wise my grandmother would not have been born). Some of my other relatives stayed and became Americans. It is this history of (relatively) voluntary settler migration that most families in Finland share with much of Europe, sections of Asia, and areas in Latin America. Pursuing my master’s and, later, doctorate in Finland, I had the opportunity to live in the West as a visiting student, first in Berkeley, California, and then in Lincoln, Nebraska. Next I returned to the West as a visiting scholar, this time to Tucson, Arizona, and, most recently, to San Marino, California. These visits and my other travels as a tourist in the West have taken me to numerous national parks, reservations, battlefields, and other historical sites across the Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the desert Southwest, and the Pacific Northwest. They have made me respect the vast landscapes and diverse peoples in the process. These personal experiences have also nurtured less pleasant realizations that the conquest of other peoples’ lands, subjugation and marginalization of indigenous peoples, the building of multi- cultural (yet racially hierarchical) settler societies, and the extraction of natural resources in order to fuel the industrial revolution and mass consumption have been essential ingredients in Western history. I have also realized that these things come with lasting legacies as well as intricate transnational connections. For the purposes of this book, the European fascination with the West, the transnational mobility of people, and the multidirectional processes and lega- cies of empires and conquest – of trading, settling, and invading – demonstrate in their varied ways how the American West is not just a distant land out there, but part of our collective, global, history.
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