Book Review: Writing Western History

Richard W. Etulain, ed. Writing Western History: Essays on Major Western Historians, Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 2002.

This work is a collection of biographies of eminent western historians from the nineteenth to the late twentieth century. To be more accurate, this work briefly describes the personal lives of historians of the American West before launching into studies of each historian’s major works. This work was designed and edited by the historian Richard W. Etulain, who also writes one of the essays, the introduction and the conclusion. The purpose of the work is to explicate how the writing of western history has changed over the course of American history, from the journals of men like Lewis and Clark and Zebulon Pike who merely recorded events they saw and impressions of people they came in contact with to twentieth century historians like Earl Pomeroy who wrote complex histories of the American West designed to enable others to understand the relationship between the West and the development of the United States. Writing Western History traces this evolution in eleven chapters that focus on ten of the most important historians of the U.S. West: Josiah Royce, Hubert Howe Bancroft, Frederick Jackson Turner, Frederic Logan Paxson, Walter Prescott Webb, Herbert Eugene Bolton, James C. Malin, Henry Nash Smith, Ray Allen Billington, and Earl Pomeroy.

This work begins with an introduction to early interpretations of the significance of the frontier to American history. The two historians mentioned in this section are Royce and Bancroft. Royce’s view of the frontier is similar to the later interpretation of Turner in that it occupies a central place in the development of the character for the American citizen. Unlike Turner, however, Royce believed that the frontier had the force of a centrifuge when it was used to analyze the role of “loners” in building the West. To Royce, the loner figure that embodied the characteristic of individuality to Turner was seen as something of an impediment to the construction of community in the West. Communities would be constructed in Royce’s histories with the arrival of women. Royce places women in a central role in terms of importance while other western historians would largely ignore women for most of the twentieth century until the advent of the New West movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Neither Royce nor Bancroft, the second historian examined in this work, was at the same level of Turner in terms of theorizing about the West. Bancroft recognized the frontier as an important aspect of American history but he was a historian cut from what has been described as the Parkman mold. When Bancroft wrote about the frontier it was in a nationalistic bent, his works are for the most part commercialized history and to go one step further, as this book also points out, they were little more than collections of facts. But still, both Royce and Bancroft were necessary first steps in bringing professional credence to the field of western history. Turner would eventually combine Royce’s attempts to discover the significance of historical events with Bancroft’s attention to primary resources in writing his history of the frontier.

Following the discussion of Royce and Bancroft in which a great deal is learned about the creation of the Bancroft Library and how Royce used Bancroft’s sources, the subject of the book turns to Frederick Jackson Turner. This is the most important part of the book. As it has been argued by western historians like Patricia Nelson Limerick, Turner is of great importance because he created the framework that came to be associated with the history of the American West for much of the twentieth century and the New West history movement was in direct response to Turner’s emphasis of process over place and the absence of women, minorities, eastern capitalists, etc. from his theories. In Writing Western History, Turner’s works are examined in two chapters. The first chapter discusses how he came up with his famous thesis; this is largely accomplished by analyzing his education. Turner earned his doctorate degree from Johns Hopkins where he studied under professors with a wide range of interests. He learned techniques utilized by social scientists as well as German historical scholarship. Turner learned how to treat society as an organism and analyze it using Darwinian methodology. In crafting his dissertation Turner applied all that he had learned at Johns Hopkins. His dissertation shares some of the theoretical traits that his famous thesis would later possess, especially his emphasis on “primitive” and “advanced” elements coming together on a frontier region to form something new.

In 1893 Turner would deliver his famous thesis in Chicago and later that year he would submit it for publication. Over the next few decades, Turner would proselytize among historians and the general public to gather acceptance of his theories with great success. Eventually, Turner’s thesis enabled western history to be viewed as the history of America itself, before falling into disfavor later in the twentieth century. Turner’s famous thesis, which in elementary terms stated that the push into “free and open” land forged the national character and explained American development, has become viewed as the only major work of his career. One of the aims of the two essays on Turner in Writing Western History is to explain the evolution of Turner’s thinking on frontier history. According to this work, Turner’s writings on the importance of the section in American History reflect a change in his beliefs about the west. Whereas the frontier thesis argued that the frontier had closed and a new model of analysis needed to be created for understanding contemporary American history, Turner’s writings on the section seemed to offer that framework. Turner’s sectional thesis, generally stated, was a theory that “a framework that provided constancy (in regards to the process of community) would be important in a frontier-less society as native-born generations replaced their pioneer parents and restless mobility subsided into attachment to place”. One of the major points of Writing Western History is that Turner bridged his early and later thoughts on American history by stating that pioneers possessed two distinct desires: on the one hand they have a desire to wander and on the other hand, they desire to settle down and establish communities. These desires, Turner believed, grew out of the frontier process that “had bred rampant individualism as well as a collective endeavor”.

Throughout the following chapters in Writing Western History, the individual essayists contemplate the contributions of other historians to our understanding of the American West. Etulain contributed an article on Frederic Logan Paxson in which he analyzes the debate on whether Paxson had been able to mark out his own path in western history or if he had adhered to that of Turner. Etulain finds that Paxson was able to mark out his own path while creating groundbreaking syntheses of frontier history. Each essay in this discusses the major works of the collection of ten western historians. This is the common tie that binds the book together, since after all, most of the historians in this work came down on different sides of historical debates and chose to write in different styles and utilize differing methodologies. Etulain analyzes Paxson’s The Last American Frontier, History of the American Frontier, When the West Is Gone, The New Nation, and Recent History of the United States. By analyzing these works, Etulain comes to the conclusion that Paxson was a loyal Turnerian in regards to the frontier thesis but was at odds with Turner when it came to ideas on the importance of the section in American history. Etulain is cautious in his discussion of the similarities of Paxson and Turner, because as he points out, Paxson was not merely an imitator of Turner, he was in many ways a groundbreaker due to his ability to synthesize secondary sources and produce volumes on the frontier in American history, something that Turner’s writers block had prevented him from accomplishing.

The next group of historians that are discussed in Writing Western History include Walter Prescott Webb, Herbert Eugene Bolton and James C. Malin. Webb is one of the most important of the twentieth century western historians thanks in large part to his work The Great Plains. It was this work that established the boundaries of the West for millions of Americans. In contrast to the history of Turner, for instance, in which the West is a process instead of a place, Webb clearly defined the region’s boundaries and stated that the region had existed long before Europeans stepped foot on the continent and in fact, the region was immortal. It was not a dead or dying region as Turner’s frontier thesis had led many Americans to believe. One criticism of Webb’s attempts to establish the boundaries of the West was that by stating that New England or the Ohio Valley or parts of the Mississippi Valley were never part of the West (as Turner’s thesis assumed), Webb was removing what had been a “unifying vision” for Americans. Webb’s other book that is discussed in Writing Western History is The Great Frontier. This work attempts to take the frontier as it is understood in America and extend that analytical tool to the rest of the world, but in particular to Europe. This work actually could be described as an early attempt in the field of Atlantic world history as it primarily centers on events in Africa, Europe, North America and South America. This book was poorly received by many critics for being too general in its analysis of European politics and economic institutions as well as for the view that Webb put forward that many of the countries invaded by Europeans were in fact, “vast bodies of wealth without proprietors”.

The essay on Herbert Eugene Bolton focuses largely on Bolton’s attempt to publish a guide to documents pertaining to United States history stored in Mexican archives. Guide to Materials for the History of the United States in the Principal Archives of Mexico is considered to be the most significant work of Bolton’s career (a career that spanned nearly 90 books and articles). As Donald Worcester argues in Writing Western History, Bolton had a strong desire to study the history of the United States Southwest during the period of Spanish colonization. Bolton wanted to do for the Southwest what Francis Parkman did for the French in North America, and make the history appealing and accessible by publishing documents held in Spanish and Mexican archives. If there is one major drawback to Worcester’s approach in this essay it is that he largely ignores the Borderland’s history that Bolton is so well known for today to focus on Bolton’s trips to archives in Central America and Europe and the publications that resulted following the translation of those sources.

From Bolton, there follows essays on James C. Malin, a largely uninteresting sketch of the man and his contributions to the field of western history written by a former student of Malin’s, Allen G. Bogue. Bogue spends a large amount of time discussing the quirks of his old instructor including the type of humor Malin liked to engage in as well as how Malin would stare at one of the corners in the back of his classroom while he “deeply pondered” a student’s question. What is of interest in Bogue’s essay is the discussion of Malin’s environmentalism several decades before this field became fashionable. According to Bogue, the major contributions of Malin to western history were his “writings on expansion and territorial growth on the antebellum frontier of the Nebraska country”. In explicating the debt owed by historians today to Malin, however, it must be said that Bogue uses far too many pages to sum up that debt. Many times in Bogue’s essay he wanders off topic to explore some personal insight unrelated to the works of Malin; insights which add nothing to our understanding of Malin as a historian.

In the section that follows, a group of recent western historians are examined. The first of these essays begins with Henry Nash Smith and focuses largely on Smith’s work Virgin Land. The author of this essay, Lee Clark Mitchell, is a professor of English. Throughout his essay, Mitchell attempts to apply literary analysis to Smith’s work, which is filled with metaphor. The result is a mix of interesting and confusing insights into Smith’s well-known work. This is probably the most difficult of the essays in terms of the ability of the reader to understand the analytical tools of the author. Mitchell states that what makes Smith unique among western historians is his training in cultural and literary criticism rather than in history. Mitchell believes that this training allows Smith to approach the writing of history from a much different perspective than other authors. Ray Allen Billington offers a much different portrait for recent historians of the American West when compared to Smith. Billington was a supporter of the Turner thesis and worked for much of his academic life to rehabilitate the ideas of Turner. The major book that Patricia Nelson Limerick examines to understand Billington’s theories is Westward Expansion. In this work, Billington explains which parts of the frontier thesis are salvageable and which of Turner’s ideas had to be jettisoned. Billington shared with Turner the belief that the frontier experience was something that was unique and its occurrence had led to America being exceptional when compared to other nations. In attempting to salvage the frontier thesis Billington refined much of Turner’s writings, including Turner’s explication of the frontier process. To Billington, this process was best imagined as a series of zones moving across the country. There were six different types of zones that could be in existence at any given time before the 1890s when the frontier was officially closed. The first zone belonged to the fur traders, next came the cattlemen, followed by miners (where the geology allowed it), then pioneer farmers and then equipped farmers and lastly the urban frontier. Limerick takes Billington to task for what she believes that he left out: women, minorities, soldiers, explorers, loggers, investors, etc. This was also a holdover, it would appear, from the original frontier thesis published by Turner. Although Limerick does find much to disagree with in Billington’s writings, she sums up Billington as a historian that attempted to bridge the gap between the writings of Turner and those of the New West movement with a level of objectivism that in the end is not enough to “bridge the gap” of understanding.

Writing Western History is a fine overview of the historiography of the American West. The book contains many interesting insights into the personal lives of some of the greats of the field. In many ways it is heartening to read about the challenges most of these scholars went through to earn their first job or to publish their first book, even to graduate with their B.A. At least two of these individuals were in their late twenties before they earned their B.A. The most important feature of this book is the ability of readers to use it as a bibliographic resource, that feature alone makes it worth the purchase price.