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Informationen zum Autor Anne F. Hyde is a professor of history at Colorado College. She is the author of An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture and coauthor, with William Deverell, of The West in the History of the Nation. Klappentext Winner of the 2012 Bancroft Prize in American HistoryFinalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in History To most people living in the West, the Louisiana Purchase made little difference: the United States was just another imperial overlord to be assessed and manipulated. This was not, as Empires, Nations, and Families makes clear, virgin wilderness discovered by virtuous Anglo entrepreneurs. Rather, the United States was a newcomer in a place already complicated by vying empires. This book documents the broad family associations that crossed national and ethnic lines and that, along with the river systems of the trans-Mississippi West, formed the basis for a global trade in furs that had operated for hundreds of years before the land became part of the United States. Empires, Nations, and Families shows how the world of river and maritime trade effectively shifted political power away from military and diplomatic circles into the hands of local people. Tracing family stories from the Canadian North to the Spanish and Mexican borderlands and from the Pacific Coast to the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, Anne F. Hyde’s narrative moves from the earliest years of the Indian trade to the Mexican War and the gold rush era. Her work reveals how, in the 1850s, immigrants to these newest regions of the United States violently wrested control from Native and other powers, and how conquest and competing demands for land and resources brought about a volatile frontier culture-not at all the peace and prosperity that the new power had promised. To most people living in the West, the Louisiana Purchase made little difference: the United States was just another imperial overlord to be assessed and manipulated. However, this was not, as Empires, Nations, and Families makes clear, virgin wilderness discovered by virtuous Anglo entrepreneurs. Rather, the United States was a newcomer in a place already complicated by vying empires. Inhaltsverzeichnis List of Illustrations List of MapsAcknowledgments: Adventures in the Land of the DeadIntroduction: The Geography of Empire in 1804 St. Louis Michilimackinac Santa Fe The Pacific Coast Family Stories "Died Single" Why Fur and Why Families? Sources and Definitions Maps and SignpostsPart I: Replacing a State: The Continental Web of Family TradeChapter 1: Families and Fur: The Personal World of the Early American West The Chouteau Family and Missouri River World "Middle Ground" or "Native Ground"? "Tough Love" and Family Loyalty On the Trail of Wealth and Opportunity The Sublette Brothers and Their Family Business Chasing Fortune and Family Americans in Mexico, Californios in America Dangerous PlacesChapter 2: Fort Vancouver's Families: The Custom of the Country Cogs in the Fur Trade The Local and Global Communities of the Columbia The Métis World of John McLoughlin The Tentacles of International Trade The McLoughlins and the Company Life and Work on the Columbia Global Ambitions The Fine Mesh of the Family Network Immigrants, Nations, and the Loss of a Family Empire Murder at Fort Stikine and Suicide in CaliforniaChapter 3: Three Western Places: Regional Communities and Vecinidad William Bent's Border World Bent's Fort and Its Neighborhood Omens and Weddings Norteños and Yanquis in Alta California Captain Sutter's New Helvetia Dinner and Diplomacy in Northern California Portents of Change Stephen Austin's Border World Planting Colonies in Texas Austin's Fractious Neighb...
