Dominion from Sea to Sea : Pacific Ascendancy and American Power

by Bruce Cumings

• ISBN13: 9780300111880
• ISBN10: 0300111886
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2009-11-17
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

America is the first world power to inhabit an immense land mass open at both ends to the world's two largest oceansthe Atlantic and the Pacific. This gives America a great competitive advantage often overlooked by Atlanticists, whose focus remains overwhelmingly fixed on America's relationship with Europe. Bruce Cumings challenges the Atlanticist perspective in this innovative new history, arguing that relations with Asia influenced our history greatly. Cumings chronicles how the movement westward, from the Middle West to the Pacific, has shaped America's industrial, technological, military, and global rise to power. He unites domestic and international history, international relations, and political economy to demonstrate how technological change and sharp economic growth have created a truly bicoastal national economy that has led the world for more than a century. Cumings emphasizes the importance of American encounters with Mexico, the Philippines, and the nations of East Asia. The result is a wonderfully integrative history that advances a strong argument for a dual approach to American history incorporating both Atlanticist and Pacificist perspectives.

Author Biography

Bruce Cumings is chair of the history department at the University of Chicago. Author of the award-winning book The Origins of the Korean War, he has also written for The New York Review of Books, The New Left Review, London Review of Books, and The Nation.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xviii
A Frontier of the Mind
The Machine in the Garden	p. 3
"The Remote beyond Compare": Finding California	p. 41
From Sea to Shining Sea: Manifest Destiny
A Continent in Five Easy Pieces	p. 55
Manifest Destiny's Offspring: Gold, the Continental Railroad, Texas	p. 94
Abroad in Search of Monsters to Destroy	p. 126
Pacific States, New England Peoples
East of Eden: The Pacific Northwest	p. 157
Edens Lush and Frigid	p. 175
Pacific Crossings: Asians in the New States	p. 197
"A Crust of the Earth": Protean California
A Garden Cornucopia	p. 219
"There It Is. Take It": Water and Power	p. 244
Southern California: Island on the Pacific	p. 264
A Tipping Point
The State as Pretense of Itself: Developing the West	p. 299
Postwar California and the Rise of Western Republicanism	p. 335
In California's Shadow: The Rest of the West in the Postwar Era	p. 363
Archipelago of Empire: An American Grid for the Global Garden	p. 388
Silicon Valley: A New World at the Edge of the Sea	p. 424
Conclusion: The American Ascendancy	p. 471
Appendix	p. 501
Notes	p. 515
Bibliography	p. 553
Index	p. 589
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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