Boundaries--lines imposed on the landscape--shape our lives,
dictating everything from which candidates we vote for to what
schools our children attend to the communities with which we
identify. In "Creating the American West," historian Derek R.
Everett examines the function of these internal lines in American
history generally and in the West in particular. Drawing lines to
create states in the trans-Mississippi West, he points out, imposed
a specific form of political organization that made the West truly
American.
Everett examines how settlers lobbied for boundaries and how
politicians imposed them. He examines the origins of
boundary-making in the United States from the colonial era through
the Louisiana Purchase. Case studies then explore the ethnic,
sectional, political, and economic angles of boundaries. Everett
first examines the boundaries between Arkansas and its neighboring
Native cultures, and the pseudo war between Missouri and Iowa. He
then traces the lines splitting the Oregon Country and the states
of California and Nevada, and considers the ethnic and political
consequences of the boundary between New Mexico and Colorado. He
explains the evolution of the line splitting the Dakotas, and
concludes with a discussion of ways in which state boundaries can
contribute toward new interpretations of borderlands history.
A major theme in the history of state boundaries is the question
of whether to use geometric or geographic lines--in other words,
lines corresponding to parallels and meridians or those fashioned
by natural features. With the distribution of western land, Everett
shows, geography gave way to geometry and transformed the West. The
end of boundary-making in the late nineteenth century is not the
end of the story, however. These lines continue to complicate a
host of issues including water rights, taxes, political
representation, and immigration. "Creating the American West" shows
how the past continues to shape the present.
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