94
edits
Changes
→Patricia Limerick and Donald Worster
Limerick focused on the variety and interactions of western inhabitants by seeing the west as a meeting ground of different groups of people. Limerick recognized that the Southwest was a contested borderland and a diverse common ground. In Limerick’s book, the conquest of the Southwest, so often seen from the perspectives of the victors in western narratives, was reoriented and made to show the experiences of the people living in the contested area and subjected to the “Anglo-American talent to change overnight from being intruders to being legitimate residents and, conversely to turn the natives into “foreigners.”<ref>Limerick, pg 239.</ref> By weaving the biographies and social histories into a synthesis treatment of the American West, Limerick was able to build on the historiographical innovations of the 1960s and 1970s, but she also helped redefine the field of Western history and redirect it in ways that contributed to the understanding of the Southwest.
A couple of years before Patricia Limerick published <I>Legacy of Conquest</refi>, Donald Worster established continuity and conquest within Western history in his book, <I>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195078063/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0195078063&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=468d5cbb191fe58e8cf5fc141237767d Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity and the Growth of the American West]</i>, by connecting the arid environment of the Southwest to the economic inequality and instrumentalism that developed in the region. Worster also rejected Turner’s frontier thesis, and like Limerick chose to define the perspective of his work according to the reality of the land itself, not the general direction of the movement of white settlement. He, however, focused his analysis of the region on the way the technological advances in irrigation and riparian manipulation arose in response to the arid conditions of the Southwest. He explained how the distinct demands of arid environments historically resulted in the development of “hydraulic societies,” but that the domination of nature in the arid regions of the American West went further than previous irrigation-based empires.<ref>Donald Worster, <I>Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity and the Growth of the American West</I> (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), pg7.</ref>
Pursuing a policy of “total use for greater wealth,” an alliance of capitalists, politicians and regulators constructed an economic and political structure that favored the accumulation of wealth, property and power in the hands of relatively few people.<ref>Worster, pg 262.</ref> Worster warned of the anti-democratic and ultimately anti-life implications of the Capitalist State, and urged his readers to accommodate nature instead of subduing it. Through his analysis of the powerful economic structures that enabled the accumulation of capital, Worster also exposed the social and economic constraints experienced by the inhabitants of the Southwest. He not only highlighted the importance of the region, and advocated wise stewardship of nature, but also recommended a re-examination of nature’s relationship to human history.
