One of the Most Important Battlegrounds in the History of America
While it is in the eastern United States where most Americans identify our military history, the vast, resource-rich Pacific Northwest, stretching from Northern California through British Columbia, endured a series of battles and wars over the course of the nineteenth century that were of regional and national importance. It was here where Great Britain and the United States had their final confrontation in the Americas, where Chief Joseph attempted to secure independence for the Nez Perce, and where the Oregon Trail marked the first great migration to the West of settlers bent on carving out new lives in the wilderness. The Pacific Northwest also saw some of the only attacks on the mainland by Japan during World War II.
Beginning with the earliest known accounts of wars among the American Indians of the region, Fighting for Paradise: A Military History of the Pacific Northwest describes early European contact, including British trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Jedediah Smith, and John Jacob Astor's trading post. The competition over the lucrative fur trade led to the "Pig War," which almost resulted in another armed conflict between Great Britain and the United States, but it was the influx of settlers from the Oregon Trail that touched off the long bitter battles between whites and American Indians. Starting with the 1847 Whitman Massacre and the ensuing war it touched off, the book covers the next three decades of violence, ending with the Sheepeater's War in 1879. Kurt R. Nelson then relates the Pacific Northwest's contributions to the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars, the Mexican Punitive Expedition, World War I, and finally World War II, where the region fought Japanese submarine attacks and was harassed by balloon bombs. Throughout, the author provides current information about the state of preservation of various battle sites and other points of historical interest. Accompanied by maps and photographs, Fighting for Paradise provides insight into an area of American military history, rich in drama, that is not generally known.
Among the environmental challenges facing us is alleviating the damage to marine ecosystems caused by pollution and overfishing. Coming to grips with contemporary problems, this book argues, depends on understanding how people have historically generated, perceived, and responded to environmental change. This work explores interactions between society and environment in China’s most important marine fishery, the Zhoushan Archipelago off the coast of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, from its nineteenth-century expansion to the exhaustion of the most important fish species in the 1970s.
This history of Zhoushan’s fisheries illuminates long-term environmental processes and analyzes the intersections of local, regional, and transnational ecological trends and the array of private and state interests that shaped struggles for the control of these common-pool natural resources. What institutions did private and state actors use to regulate the use of the fishery? How did relationships between social organizations and the state change over time? What types of problems could these arrangements solve and which not? What does the fate of these institutions tell us about environmental change in late imperial and modern China? Answering these questions will give us a better understanding of the relationship between past ecological changes and present environmental challenges.
In the summer of 1862, the U.S. Army court martialed Colonel John B. Turchin, a Russian-born Union officer, for "outrages" committed by his troops in Athens, Alabama
In the summer of 1862, the U.S. Army court martialed Colonel John B. Turchin, a Russian-born Union officer, for offenses committed by his troops in Athens, Alabama, including looting, safe cracking, the vandalization of homes, and the rape of young black women. The pillage of Athens violated a government policy of conciliation; it was hoped that if Southern civilians were treated gently as citizens of the United States, they would soon return their allegiance to the federal government.
By examining the volunteers who made up Turchin’s force, the colonel's trial, his subsequent promotion, the policy debate surrounding the incident and the public reaction to the outcome, the authors further illuminate one of the most provocative questions in Civil War studies: how did the policy set forth by President Lincoln evolve from one of conciliation to one far more modern in nature, placing the burden of war on the civilian population of the South?
At least fifty-six frontier forts once stood in, or within view of, what is now the state of Iowa. The earliest date to the 1680s, while the latest date to the Dakota uprising of 1862. Some were vast compounds housing hundreds of soldiers; others consisted of a few sheds built by a trader along a riverbank. Regardless of their size and function—William Whittaker and his contributors include any compound that was historically called a fort, whether stockaded or not, as well as all military installations—all sought to control and manipulate Indians to the advantage of European and American traders, governments, and settlers. Frontier Forts of Iowa draws extensively upon the archaeological and historical records to document this era of transformation from the seventeenth-century fur trade until almost all Indians had been removed from the region.
The earliest European-constructed forts along the Mississippi, Des Moines, and Missouri rivers fostered a complex relationship between Indians and early traders. After the Louisiana Purchase of 1804, American military forts emerged in the Upper Midwest, defending the newly claimed territories from foreign armies, foreign traders, and foreign-supported Indians. After the War of 1812, new forts were built to control Indians until they could be moved out of the way of American settlers; forts of this period, which made extensive use of roads and trails, teamed a military presence with an Indian agent who negotiated treaties and regulated trade. The final phase of fort construction in Iowa occurred in response to the Spirit Lake massacre and the Dakota uprising; the complete removal of the Dakota in 1863 marked the end of frontier forts in a state now almost completely settled by Euro-Americans.
By focusing on the archaeological evidence produced by many years of excavations and by supporting their words with a wealth of maps and illustrations, the authors uncover the past and connect it with the real history of real places. In so doing they illuminate the complicated and dramatic history of the Upper Midwest in a time of enormous change. Past is linked to present in the form of a section on visiting original and reconstructed forts today.
Gayle F. Carlson
Jeffrey T. Carr
Lance M. Foster
Kathryn E. M. Gourley
Marshall B. McKusick
Cindy L. Nagel
David J. Nolan
Cynthia L. Peterson
Leah D. Rogers
Regena Jo Schantz
Christopher M. Schoen
Vicki L. Twinde-Javner
William E. Whittaker
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