When I was writing Legacy, I ran into a comment in a newspaper, I believe from the state engineer of California, saying, 'There wouldn't be any West if it weren't for irrigation.' Well, that does not help us answer what the West is, because it is still this floaty thing that is always just going out of your reach.īut the truth is I am fine with a variety of definitions of where the West is for different reasons. Where a bunch of people who were not born and raised in that area come in and take over, and there has to be a study of that process.įor years after Legacy of Conquest came out, there was a concerted effort to torment me with people saying, 'Well, wasn't the West once west of Jamestown? Wasn't the West once east of Massachusetts Bay?' As George Catlin wrote in the 1830s, where is the West? “Phantom-like it flies before us as we travel …' So, for a while, it was really important to say that the West is a place, and that we were ignoring it, and we needed to put as much attention there as we were putting on other regional histories.Īlso, something happens in North America, and in Kenya, and in South Africa, and New Zealand, and Australia. So they were doing what they call American history, but it was really East Coast, Midwest, Southern history. And there was a long spell where people who called themselves American historians-the people who wrote American history textbooks, or taught American history survey courses-wrote regional history, taught regional history and spoke of regional history.

My personal preference is place because it is a really important place. So, I used to try to pin the darn thing down, and it just was out of my grip all the time. The American West can be whatever it wants to be, and no matter what you try to pin it down as, it will change.

American conquest no launch