With so many statements vying for limited headline space, it seems that President Trump’s audacious assertions about Canada, Greenland, Gulf of Mexico, and the Panama Canal have been characterized by many as mostly “Trump being Trump,” which may very well be true. And I probably would not have given it much more thought had I not at the same time been reading my favorite college professor’s sweeping history of the American West titled, Continental Reckoning.
For future reference, when you hear that someone has written a “sweeping history,” you can safely assume that it is a big ass book, which this one is. But it is a worthwhile read, especially for Americans to “be closer to understanding ourselves and how we have come to be.” (Prelude, page xxx — that’s Roman numeral thirty, not something dirty!)
I confess an added personal interest in the American West having lived in California for a dozen years in the past, and as I dove into the sweeping history in early January, it seemed all the more relevant when historic wildfires devastated the large numbers of people that have been drawn westward to what has become extremely valuable properties there. But it was reading of historic American expansion (and its consequences) alongside President Trump’s bold expansionist rhetoric that really began to capture my attention.
A book review is not my intention, but I will explain that the mid-1800s witnessed incredible American expansion and transformation, and while historians typically focus on the violent and fateful American Civil War from that era, Dr. West encourages us to “broaden our view in space and time.” He writes, “The Civil War and the birth of the West . . . should be given something like equal billing in this crucial transition in national life. Each event has its own story and deserves its own narrative, but each was often in conversation with the other, and when each is properly considered in its broadest context, neither can be understood without the other.” (Prelude, page xx)
The extraordinary experience of the American West erupted from the discovery of California gold just as the territory became an American possession in 1848, something Dr. West calls, “The Great Coincidence.” (i.e., “Within two hundred hours of its becoming part of the republic . . . California began to be revealed as the most valuable real estate on the continent.” – page 5)
It is no surprise that significant expansion is often an economic flex, but the consequences often extend much further.
For example, in the story of the American West, in addition to the vast increase in power, opportunity, and affluence, there were incredible advances in communication, science, technology, and transportation — but the costs were enormous: “hundreds of thousands dead or dispossessed” (454), “land stolen and turned into poisoned grotesqueries” (454), and an appalling racial ordering with devastating effects for Native communities, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Chinese immigrants — Dr. West even shared another historian’s observation that the architects of Nazi Germany admired the United States and “believed they were ‘not so much inventing a race-obsessed state as catching up with one’” based on the U.S. treatment of those considered non-“white.” (453)
I recognize that this is the 2020s and not the 1850s, and that talk of expansion might be the bluster of a negotiator, but my thought for those of us used to a flag with fifty stars is this: Don’t take expansion rhetoric lightly. Be aware. Expansion produces consequences, often significant, and we should not allow our unfamiliarity with it and the possible allure of new acquisitions to prevent us from careful consideration of past experiences in our own days of reckoning, particularly if the proposed expansion is broad and, well, sweeping.
Faulkner’s famous line, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” seems apropos. Or, as Dr. West suggests near the end of this volume that he subtitled, The American West in the Age of Expansion: “The consequences remain; yesterday makes today. As for tomorrow and how best to use it, the stories and their voices offer up hints and provocations.” (454)
Starting to Look Up 