The quarter-century of Mexican sovereignty over the land that is today the American Southwest was a period of turmoil and transition. Between 1821 and 1846, Mexico City's ties to the far northern frontier were steadily weakened by domestic political and social strife as well as by foreign economic encroachment. The gradual loss of social and economic links and the eventual lapse of political allegiance is perceptively reinterpreted from the Mexican perspective by Professor Weber.

The book is essential reading for all who are interested in the history of the West and the Southwest....

This account of the French era in Canada is the most original treatment of the subject in over a century. The analysis and ideas in the first edition helped create a whole new school of thought about Canadian history. Over 50,000 copies have been used in classrooms in Canada and the United States in the decade since its publication. In this revised edition, the author updates the bibliography and adds new ideas advanced in the 1970s that will make more valuable still this acclaimed general history of New France.

Historians have paid little attention to the lives and contributions of children who took part in westward expansion. In this major study of American childhood, now available again in paperback, Elliott West explores how children helped shape--and in turn were shaped by--the frontier experience. Frontier children's first vivid perceptions of the new country, when deepened by their work, play, and exploration, forged a stronger bond with their surroundings than that of their elders. Through diaries, journals, letters, novels, and oral and written reminiscences, West has reconstructed the...

This synthesis of Indian-white relations west of the Appalachians from the end of the French and Indian War to the beginning of the Mexican War is not simply a story of whites versus Indians. The term whites encompassed British, Spanish, and American settlers and governments, and the hundreds of Indian tribes who opposed them were no more unified than their European colonizers. The author focuses on relations among the British, the Spanish, the Americans, and Indian tribes in territories claimed by more than one of these groups, with particular emphasis on Indian tribes' pursuit of...

Once neglected, racial minorities are now the focus of intense interest among historians of the American West, who have come to recognize the roles of African American, Chinese, and Mexican people in shaping the frontier. Racial Frontiers is both a highly original work, particularly in its emphasis on racial minority women, and a masterful synthesis of the literature in this young field.De Leon depicts a U.S. West populated by settlers anticipating opportunities for upward mobility, jockeying for position as they adapted to new surroundings, and adjusting to new political and...

One of the foremost historians of Lewis and Clark, Ronda grounds "Finding the West" in the insights and reflections he has gleaned from some twenty years of research and writing about this pivotal era. But above all else, Ronda's book is centered on stories and storytellers. As he writes: "This is a book about many storytellers. Their words are French-Canadian, Shoshone, New Hampshire English, Hidatsa, and Chinookan." Ronda documents not only the stories that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark offered about their "road across the continent," but also the large and important stories by and...

As late as mid-1941 the two territories of Alaska and Hawai'i were little known by most Americans. Alaska was seen as a frozen wasteland and Hawai'i, an exotic outpost in the mid-Pacific with a multi-racial, particularly Asian, population. The bombing of Pearl Harbor in late 1941 and the capture of two Aleutian Islands in 1942 made the two territories central theaters of World War II. Thousands of Americans came to know Alaska and Hawai'i as never before.

Once the war ended both territories hoped that statehood would be their reward for such loyal wartime service. Their strategic...