Stephen Aron – författare

A new understanding of how the West came to beFor over 35 years, the dominant histories of the American West have been narratives of horrific conflicts. Framed in terms of empire building, these histories use modern constructs of ethnic cleansing and genocide to reckon the costs of centuries of conquest and settler colonialism. This vocabulary, and the interpretation it supports, sharply contrasts with older accounts of the "winning of the West," which had exulted in the triumph of civilization over savagery, making America great -- and great again. As dark and as bloody as western grounds have often been however, there were also important episodes of concord, instances of barriers breached, accords reached, and of people overcoming their differences as opposed to being overcome by them. Aron traces the origins of these episodes and thoughtfully considers the factors that led to their ultimate undoing. Featuring well-known figures such as Daniel Boone, William Clark, and Wyatt Earp, Peace and Friendship highlights locales where unexpectedly peaceful relations occurred, examining the particular circumstances that gave way to concord. These instances of peace may not have been long-lived, but what is critical is that the mainstream history of conflict and the alternative history of concord play out on the same historical plain (or plane). Take, for example, the shaky cohabitation that occurred in the Clatsop encampment, the terminal point of Lewis and Clark's westward expedition. The peace with the Clatsop tribe would not last, as the friendships and alliances struck up were forged in the interest of commercial advantage and survival, and eventually ended in theft. But examining the instance of cohabitation itself deepens our understanding of how the West came to be: through colonization, violence, misunderstanding, and, surprisingly, at times, peace.

Part geographical location, part time period, and part state of mind, the American West is a concept often invoked but rarely defined. Though popular culture has carved out a short and specific time and place for the region, author and longtime Californian Stephen Aron tracks "the West" from the building of the Cahokia Mounds around 900 AD to the post-World War II migration to California. His Very Short Introduction stretches the chronology, enlarges the geography, and varies the casting, providing a history of the American West that is longer, larger, and more complicated than popular culture has previously suggested. It is a history of how portions of North America became Wests, how parts of these became American, and how ultimately American Wests became the American West.Aron begins by describing the expansion of Indian North America in the centuries before and during its early encounters with Europeans. He then explores the origins of American westward expansion from the Seven Years' War to the 1830s, focusing on the western frontier at the time: the territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. He traces the narrative - temporally and geographically - through the discovery of gold in California in the mid-nineteenth century and the subsequent rush to the Pacific Slope. He shows how the passage of the Newlands Reclamation Act in 1902 brought an unprecedented level of federal control to the region, linking the West more closely to the rest of the United States, and how World War II brought a new rush of population (particularly to California), further raising the federal government's profile in the region and heightening the connections between the West and the wider world. Authoritative, lucid, and ranging widely over issues of environment, people, and identity, this is the American West stripped of its myths. The complex convergence of peoples, polities, and cultures that has decisively shaped the history of the American West serves as the key interpretive thread through this Very Short Introduction.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

In the heart of North America, the Missouri, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers come together, uniting waters from west, north, and east on a journey to the south. This is the region that Stephen Aron calls the American Confluence. Aron's innovative book examines the history of that region—a home to the Osage, a colony exploited by the French, a new frontier explored by Lewis and Clark—and focuses on the region's transition from a place of overlapping borderlands to one of oppositional border states. American Confluence is a lively account that will delight both the amateur and professional historian.