The Myth of the American Frontier

The Myth of the American Frontier PDF Author: Robin W. Winks
Publisher: [Leicester, Eng.] : Leicester University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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The Myth of the American Frontier

The Myth of the American Frontier PDF Author: Robin W. Winks
Publisher: [Leicester, Eng.] : Leicester University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description


The Myth of the American Frontier

The Myth of the American Frontier PDF Author: Robin William Evert Winks
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 39

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The Myth of American Exceptionalism

The Myth of American Exceptionalism PDF Author: Godfrey Hodgson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300142684
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The idea that the United States is destined to spread its unique gifts of democracy and capitalism to other countries is dangerous for Americans and for the rest of the world, warns Godfrey Hodgson in this provocative book. Hodgson, a shrewd and highly respected British commentator, argues that America is not as exceptional as it would like to think; its blindness to its own history has bred a complacent nationalism and a disastrous foreign policy that has isolated and alienated it from the global community. Tracing the development of America’s high self regard from the early days of the republic to the present era, Hodgson demonstrates how its exceptionalism has been systematically exaggerated and—in recent decades—corrupted. While there have been distinct and original elements in America’s history and political philosophy, notes Hodgson, these have always been more heavily influenced by European thought and experience than Americans have been willing to acknowledge. A stimulating and timely assessment of how America’s belief in its exceptionalism has led it astray, this book is mandatory reading for its citizens, admirers, and detractors.

Americans Weren't the First to Live on the Frontier

Americans Weren't the First to Live on the Frontier PDF Author: Jill Keppeler
Publisher: Gareth Stevens Publishing LLLP
ISBN: 1538237415
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
The idea of the American frontier means a lot to many Americans' images of themselves and their country. Everyone has heard stories or watched movies showing tough, brave settlers crossing the continent, daring harsh weather, hostile natives, and rough terrain to nobly "tame" the frontier and expand the United States. Is this image true to life? Young readers will get a wider perspective of the tales of the American frontier, including points of view often left out of history books and popular entertainment, and learn more about the real landscape of the West.

The Borderlands of the American and Canadian Wests

The Borderlands of the American and Canadian Wests PDF Author: Sterling Evans
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803256345
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
The Borderlands of the American and Canadian Wests is the first collection of interdisciplinary essays bringing together scholars from both sides of the forty-ninth parallel to examine life in a transboundary region. The result is a text that reveals the diversity, difficulties, and fortunes of this increasingly powerful but little-understood part of the North American West. Contributions by historians, geographers, anthropologists, and scholars of criminal justice and environmental studies provide a comprehensive picture of the history of the borderlands region of the western United States and Canada. The Borderlands of the American and Canadian Wests is divided into six parts: Defining the Region, Colonizing the Frontier, Farming and Other Labor Interactions, the Borderlands as a Refuge in the Nineteenth Century, the Borderlands as a Refuge in the Twentieth Century, and Natural Resources and Conservation along the Border. Topics include the borderlands environment; its aboriginal and gender history; frontier interactions and comparisons; agricultural and labor relations; tourism; the region as a refuge for Mormons, far-right groups, and Vietnam War resisters; and conservation and natural resources. These areas show how the history and geography of the borderlands region has been transboundary, multidimensional, and unique within North America.

Exploring the Next Frontier

Exploring the Next Frontier PDF Author: Matthew Wilhelm Kapell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317281438
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
The 1960s and early 70s saw the evolution of Frontier Myths even as scholars were renouncing the interpretive value of myths themselves. Works like Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War exemplified that rejection using his experiences during the Vietnam War to illustrate the problematic consequences of simple mythic idealism. Simultaneously, Americans were playing with expanded and revised versions of familiar Frontier Myths, though in a contemporary context, through NASA’s lunar missions, Star Trek, and Gerard K. O’Neill’s High Frontier. This book examines the reasons behind the exclusion of Frontier Myths to the periphery of scholarly discourse, and endeavors to build a new model for understanding their enduring significance. This model connects NASA’s failed attempts to recycle earlier myths, wholesale, to Star Trek’s revision of those myths and rejection of the idea of a frontier paradise, to O’Neill’s desire to realize such a paradise in Earth’s orbit. This new synthesis defies the negative connotations of Frontier Myths during the 1960s and 70s and attempts to resuscitate them for relevance in the modern academic context.

Regeneration Through Violence

Regeneration Through Violence PDF Author: Richard Slotkin
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504090357
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 816

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Book Description
National Book Award Finalist: A study of national myths, lore, and identity that “will interest all those concerned with American cultural history” (American Political Science Review). Winner of the American Historical Association’s Albert J. Beveridge Award for Best Book in American History In Regeneration Through Violence, the first of his trilogy on the mythology of the American West, historian and cultural critic Richard Slotkin demonstrates how the attitudes and traditions that shape American culture evolved from the social and psychological anxieties of European settlers struggling in a strange new world to claim the land and displace Native Americans. Using the popular literature of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries—including captivity narratives, the Daniel Boone tales, and the writings of Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Melville—Slotkin traces the full development of this myth. “Deserves the careful attention of everyone concerned with the history of American culture or literature. ”—Comparative Literature “Slotkin’s large aim is to understand what kind of national myths emerged from the American frontier experience. . . . [He] discusses at length the newcomers’ search for an understanding of their first years in the New World [and] emphasizes the myths that arose from the experiences of whites with Indians and with the land.” —Western American Literature

Colonial frontiers

Colonial frontiers PDF Author: Lynette Russell
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526123800
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Cross-cultural encounters produce boundaries and frontiers. This book explores the formation, structure, and maintenance of boundaries and frontiers in settler colonies. The southern nations of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have a common military heritage as all three united to fight for the British Empire during the Boer and First World Wars. The book focuses on the southern latitudes and especially Australia and Australian historiography. Looking at cross-cultural interactions in the settler colonies, the book illuminates the formation of new boundaries and the interaction between settler societies and indigenous groups. It contends that the frontier zone is a hybrid space, a place where both indigene and invader come together on land that each one believes to be their own. The best way to approach the northern Cape frontier zone is via an understanding of the significance of the frontier in South African history. The book explores some ways in which discourses of a natural, prehistoric Aboriginality inform colonial representations of the Australian landscape and its inhabitants, both indigenous and immigrant. The missions of the London Missionary Society (LMS) in Polynesia and Australia are examined to explore the ways in which frontiers between British and antipodean cultures were negotiated in colonial textuality. The role of the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand society is possibly the most important and controversial issue facing modern New Zealanders. The book also presents valuable insights into sexual politics, Aboriginal sovereignty, economics of Torres Strait maritime, and nomadism.

The German Myth of the East

The German Myth of the East PDF Author: Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191610461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Over the last two centuries and indeed up to the present day, Eastern Europe's lands and peoples have conjured up a complex mixture of fascination, anxiety, promise, and peril for Germans looking eastwards. Across the generations, a varied cast of German writers, artists, philosophers, diplomats, political leaders, generals, and Nazi racial fanatics have imagined (often in very different ways) a special German mission in the East, forging a frontier myth that paralleled the American myths of the 'Wild West' and 'Manifest Destiny'. Through close analysis of German views of the East from 1800 to our own times, The German Myth of the East reveals that this crucial international relationship has in fact been integral to how Germans have defined (and repeatedly redefined) themselves and their own national identity. In particular, what was ultimately at stake for Germans was their own uncertain position in Europe, between East and West. Paradoxically, the East came to be viewed as both an attractive land of unlimited potential for the future and as a place undeveloped, dangerous, wild, dirty, and uncultured. Running the gamut from the messages of international understanding announced by generations of German scholars and sympathetic writers, to the violent racial utopia envisaged by the Nazis, German imaginings of the East represent a crucial, yet unfamiliar, part of modern European history, and one that remains fundamentally important today in the context of an expanded European Union.

Violence in Canada

Violence in Canada PDF Author: Jeffrey Ross
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351299867
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Many people consider Canada, particularly in comparison to its southern cousin, as a "peaceable kingdom." However, as the historical record demonstrates, Canadians have never been a thoroughly non-violent people. Violence in Canada highlights from an interdisciplinary perspective the major areas and contexts where violence takes place.Consisting of thirteen contributions, the book forms an indispensable guide to the subject. All of the authors are experts in their field, many with international reputations, and are drawn from the fields of sociology, political science, history, and criminology. The foreword by Ted Robert Gurr, author of Violence in America, is followed by an historical analysis of violence on the Canadian western frontier. Other scholars describe contemporary violence: by and against indigenous peoples, women, children, and the elderly; in labor-related disputes; homicide; police and prison violence; terrorism; and discuss government responses and policy implications. Each chapter specifically addresses the sociological and political dimensions of violence. The authors make ample use of statistics and empirical research. Jeffrey Ian Ross's introduction outlines the sociopolitical dynamics of violence, and his summary chapter offers directions for future research. When the book was first published in 1995 it was widely praised by scholarly journals and has since become a standard text in the study of violence and modern Canadian cultural studies.The book is all the more valuable as its new introduction places its findings in the context of research that has been produced since the original publication. Violence in Canada will be of interest to sociologists, criminologists, and political scientists.Jeffrey Ian Ross is an associate professor in the Division of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Social Policy and fellow with the Center for Comparative and International Law, University of Baltimore. His work has appeared in many academic journals and chapters in academic texts, as well as articles in popular magazines in Canada and the United States. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of eight books.Ted Robert Gurr is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. Among his books are Why Men Rebel and Violence in America.