Captain James Cook first made contact with the area now known as British Columbia in 1778. The colonists who followed soon realized they needed a written history, both to justify their dispossession of Aboriginal peoples and to formulate an identity for a new settler society. Writing British Columbia History traces how Euro-Canadian historians took up this task, and struggled with the newness of colonial society and overlapping ties to the British Empire, the United States, and Canada. This exploration of the role of history writing in colonialism and nation building will appeal to anyone interested in the history of British Columbia, the Pacific Northwest, and history writing in Canada.
How Japan, after 250 years of self--imposed isolation, began the process of modernization is in part the story of Ranald MacDonald. In 1848 this half-Scot, half-Chinook adventurer from the Pacific Northwest landed on an island off Hokkaido. Although promptly arrested and imprisoned for seven months in Nagasaki, the intelligent, well-educated MacDonald fascinated the Japanese and became one of their first teachers of English and Western ways. Based on primary research in Japan and North America, this book chronicles the events leading to MacDonald’s journey and his later struggle to obtain recognition at home. Frederik L. Schodt has written extensively on Japan, including America and the Four Japans and Inside the Robot Kingdom. Fluent in spoken and written Japanese, he lives in San Francisco. In 2009 he was received the The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette for his contribution to the introduction and promotion of Japanese contemporary popular culture. "Schodt's account of MacDonald's life and his eventual journey to Japan is depicted with the accuracy of a trained academic and the excitement of a skillful novelist." --Kyoto Journal
Covering the adventures of coastal and ocean explorers who made key discoveries and landmark observations from northern California up the coastline to Alaska during the mid-1700s to the early 1800s, this anthology of primary source journal entries, book excerpts, maps, and drawings enables readers to "discover" the Northwest Coast for themselves. More than 200 years ago, explorers traveled from Central America, Russia, and even Europe to explore the coastline of the American Pacific Northwest, with goals of developing new trade routes, claiming territory for their home countries, expanding their fur trade, or exploring in the name of scientific discovery. This book will take readers to the decks of the great ships and along for the adventures of legendary explorers, such as James Cook, Alejandro Malaspina, and George Vancouver. This book collects primary source materials such as journal entries, book excerpts, maps, and drawings that document how explorers first experienced the unknown Pacific Northwest coast, as seen through the eyes of non-native people. Readers will learn how explorers such as Vitus Bering and Robert Gray used the full extent of their powers of observation to record the landscape, animals, and plants they witnessed as well as their interactions with indigenous peoples during their search for the mythic Northwest Passage. The book also explains how the maritime explorers of this period mapped the remote regions of the Northwest Coast, working without the benefit of modern technology and relying instead on their knowledge of a range of sciences, mathematics, and seamanship—in addition to their ability to endure harsh and dangerous conditions—to produce exceptionally detailed maps.
The 50th anniversary edition of this classic work on the art of Northwest Coast Indians now offers color illustrations for a new generation of readers along with reflections from contemporary Northwest Coast artists about the impact of this book. The masterworks of Northwest Coast Native artists are admired today as among the great achievements of the world’s artists. The painted and carved wooden screens, chests and boxes, rattles, crest hats, and other artworks display the complex and sophisticated northern Northwest Coast style of art that is the visual language used to illustrate inherited crests and tell family stories. In the 1950s Bill Holm, a graduate student of Dr. Erna Gunther, former Director of the Burke Museum, began a systematic study of northern Northwest Coast art. In 1965, after studying hundreds of bentwood boxes and chests, he published Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form. This book is a foundational reference on northern Northwest Coast Native art. Through his careful studies, Bill Holm described this visual language using new terminology that has become part of the established vocabulary that allows us to talk about works like these and understand changes in style both through time and between individual artists’ styles. Holm examines how these pieces, although varied in origin, material, size, and purpose, are related to a surprising degree in the organization and form of their two-dimensional surface decoration. The author presents an incisive analysis of the use of color, line, and texture; the organization of space; and such typical forms as ovoids, eyelids, U forms, and hands and feet. The evidence upon which he bases his conclusions constitutes a repository of valuable information for all succeeding researchers in the field. Replaces ISBN 9780295951027
"In this sound analysis of Indian-white relations in Oregon, the author clearly presents the significant regional issues and effectively integrates them into the broad national patterns."---Roger L. Nichols, University of Arizona, author of Natives and Strangers: A History of Ethnic Americans --
Among the voyages of exploration and surveying in the late 18th century, that of Alejandro Malaspina best represents the high ideals and scientific interests of the Enlightenment. Italian-born, Malaspina entered the Spanish navy in 1774. In September 1788 he and fellow-officer José Bustamante submitted a plan to the Ministry of Marine for a voyage of survey and inspection to Spanish territories in the Americas and Philippines. The expedition was to produce hydrographic charts for the use of Spanish merchantmen and warships and to report on the political, economic and defensive state of Spain's overseas possessions. The plan was approved and in July 1789 Malaspina and Bustamante sailed from Cádiz in the purpose-built corvettes, Descubierta and Atrevida. On board the vessels were scientists and artists and an array of the latest surveying and astronomical instruments. The voyage lasted more than five years. On his return Malaspina was promoted Brigadier de la Real Armada, and began work on an account of the voyage in seven volumes to dwarf the narratives of his predecessors in the Pacific such as Cook and Bougainville. Among much else, it would contain sweeping recommendations for reform in the governance of Spain's overseas empire. But Malaspina became involved in political intrigue. In November 1795 he was arrested, stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment. Although released in 1803, Malaspina spent the last seven years of his life in obscure retirement in Italy. He never resumed work on the great edition, and his journal was not published in Spain until 1885. Only in recent years has a multi-volume edition appeared under the auspices of the Museo Naval, Madrid, that does justice to the achievements of what for long was a forgotten voyage. This second volume in a series of three contains Malaspina's diario or journal, for the first time in English translation and with commentary. It covers the period from 15 December 1790 to 15 November 1792, when he visited the Pacific coasts of Central and North America, as far north as Alaska, before crossing the ocean to the Philippines. Other texts include the apocryphal voyage of Ferrer Maldonaldo through the Strait of Anian, which led to a major diversion of the Malaspina expedition in 1791.
As a unique, distant geographical region of the United States, Alaska has evolved from military insignificance to high strategic priority in the 142 years since its purchase from Russia in 1867. The reasons for this dramatic shift derive from a correlation of geography, foreign policy, domestic politics, and military technology. Historically the role of the armed forces in Alaska has been large and diverse. Alaska was one of the two principal territorial purchases made by the United States between 1803 and 1867 adding nearly 1.5 million square miles to America’s national domain. Smaller by the size of Texas than Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, Alaska, unlike all of the territories and states carved out of the former, languished in obscurity and isolation, and was administered as a colonial dependency by the military and other branches of the federal government, its official ‘territorial status’ and government notwithstanding. While sharing many common aspects of frontier settlement and Western history with territories such as Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Colorado, Alaska presented special challenges peculiar to a non-contiguous arctic and sub-Arctic environment, separated from the United States by a foreign power. Indeed, only the defeated South under Reconstruction experienced the same degree of military occupation and martial law. Alaska also has the unique distinction in the American experience of belonging to Imperial Russia before it became of interest to American expansionists. Still others found Alaska tempting and pursued their own designs North of '53. The Spanish, British, Canadians, and even the French plied Alaska’s waters and made their claims to Alyeska- the Great Land. And it is with these clashing imperial ambitions that this three-volume history begins.
The tenth edition of Keen's Latin American Civilization inaugurates a new era in the history of this classic anthology by dividing it into two volumes. This second volume retains most of the modern period sources from the ninth edition but with some significant additions including a new set of images and a wide range of new sources that reflect the latest events and trends in contemporary Latin America. The 75 excerpts in volume two provide foundational and often riveting first-hand accounts of life in modern Latin America. Concise introductions for chapters and excerpts provide essential context for understanding the primary sources.
According to eminent French anthropologist Levi-Strauss, Reid "brought Northwest Coast art to the world scene, into dialogue with the whole of mankind." In this artistic biography, Karen Duffek gives an account of Bill Reid's life and work and of his role as artist, innovator, and ambassador of Haida art. After describing the processes by which Reid came to reconstruct the formal rules of a complex artistic tradition, Duffek focuses on his mastery of new techniques, particularly in making jewellery, techniques which others now emulate. In the key chapter "Beyond the Essential Form," she uses Reid's own categories of his work as "copies, adaptations and explorations," to give a candid appraisal of his artistic achievements -- from massive poles to gold boxes, from intricate bracelets to the great bronze Killerwhale statue.
