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Global West, American Frontier: Travel, Empire, and Exceptionalism from Manifest Destiny to the Great Depression
Winner of the 2014 Western Heritage Award for Nonfiction from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum This thoughtful examination of a century of travel writing about the American West overturns a variety of popular and academic stereotypes. Looking at both European and American travelers' accounts of the West, from de Tocqueville's Democracy in America to William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways , David Wrobel offers a counter narrative to the nation's romantic entanglement with its western past and suggests the importance of some long-overlooked authors, lively and perceptive witnesses to our history who deserve new attention. Prior to the professionalization of academic disciplines, the reading public gained much of its knowledge about the world from travel writing. Travel writers found a wide and respectful audience for their reports on history, geography, and the natural world, in addition to reporting on aboriginal cultures before the advent of anthropology as a discipline. Although in recent decades western historians have paid little attention to travel writing, Wrobel demonstrates that this genre in fact offers an important and rich understanding of the American West--one that extends and complicates a simple reading of the West that promotes the notions of Manifest Destiny or American exceptionalism. Wrobel finds counterpoints to the mythic West of the nineteenth century in such varied accounts as George Catlin's Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium (1852), Richard Francis Burton's The City of the Saints (1861), and Mark Twain's Following the Equator (1897), reminders of the messy and contradictory world that people navigated in the past much as they do in the present. His book is a testament to the instructive ways in which the best travel writers have represented the West.
- GenresHistory
328 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 16, 2018
Not something for a casual listener, rather for someone interested in History and particularly American expansion.
Well written/read. I noticed some repetition, but it didn’t detract from the subject matter.
Well written/read. I noticed some repetition, but it didn’t detract from the subject matter.
February 17, 2014
The author of this book, as previously stated, is David M. Wrobel. He is currently the Merrick Chair in Western History at the University of Oklahoma. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Kent and his master’s and doctorate at Ohio University. The author has written or edited several other works centered on the same area of study such as Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory, and the Creation of the American West, The End of American Exceptionalism: Frontier Anxiety from the Old West to the New Deal, Seeing and Being Seen: Tourism in the American West, primary co-editor, with Patrick Long, and Many Wests: Place, Culture, and Regional Identity, co-editor, with Michael C. Steiner.
Wrobel’s purpose in writing this book is essentially to show how America and the world viewed the American West during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His belief is that travel writer’s during the nineteenth century did not try to mythologize the American West while those in the twentieth century, due to fear of adventure disappearing, created a view of the American West that never existed. He is not providing a new interpretation, necessarily, he is just giving context and background to an idea already held by many American historians and travel writing critics. As has just been mentioned, his target audience are American historians, travel writing critics, and those interested in how this particular region of the world have been viewed at different periods in time.
Wrobel’s central thesis is that while the twentieth century created a mythic tale about the American West and its exceptionalism; the nineteenth century and the travel writer’s during this period spoke of the American West in terms of globalization and how this region fit in with the rest of the world. His conclusion is that this change occurred due to a fear of the last frontier closing and that there would be no more adventuring out into the great unknown, essentially no more travel writing. In creating this mythic idea of the American West, Americans created a sense of self that was special and unique from all other places on Earth; while foreigners, in the twentieth century, who came to this land were disappointed to learn that the mythic West was gone.
The author has a lot of proof to back up his argument. He uses many different European writers to show how individuals outside of the United States viewed the American West; both those that enjoyed their time spent there and those that did not. His use of the European writers is especially effective because they are not attempting to create a special view of America, at least not the way American’s are and it is interesting to hear the problems some of the Europeans had even as they were making their way across the land to make money in the West.
Wrobel’s bias can be seen in his thesis. The idea that there is a feeling of a mythical American West, which could be an idea that he created for the purpose of this book. He is a British expatriate living in America and studying American history. That is going to inevitably put a slant on the way he views American Western history. However, it does not seem that that is his goal. He seems to have tried to back away from whatever biases he might bring to this study and viewed the material as objectively as possible. Although he does mention in the introduction that he uses an inordinately large amount of British writer’s in this book, which he does. As with most historical non-fiction authors, Wrobel presented his evidence and explained how each piece proved his thesis was accurate. This is the first book that has been read for this class that the author has really done a decent job of narrowing down his focus. He has a single point in time that he is attempting to discuss and he does not try and stray too far from that spot.
As a historical source this book is quite valuable. It reassess the way everyone looks at the American West and the myth it has become. The one big limitation this book has is that the author uses primarily only European writers. He does not venture out to see what travelers from other nations had to say about the American West during this time period. The book was enjoyable to read, but there were sections that could have been taken out that would have made it more so. The entire fifth chapter, save the beginning, could have been removed and the reader would still have understood the point the author was trying to make without getting an in-depth review of every regions travel guides. Overall, it is an effective source for American historians and sheds new light on the mythic West.
Wrobel’s purpose in writing this book is essentially to show how America and the world viewed the American West during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His belief is that travel writer’s during the nineteenth century did not try to mythologize the American West while those in the twentieth century, due to fear of adventure disappearing, created a view of the American West that never existed. He is not providing a new interpretation, necessarily, he is just giving context and background to an idea already held by many American historians and travel writing critics. As has just been mentioned, his target audience are American historians, travel writing critics, and those interested in how this particular region of the world have been viewed at different periods in time.
Wrobel’s central thesis is that while the twentieth century created a mythic tale about the American West and its exceptionalism; the nineteenth century and the travel writer’s during this period spoke of the American West in terms of globalization and how this region fit in with the rest of the world. His conclusion is that this change occurred due to a fear of the last frontier closing and that there would be no more adventuring out into the great unknown, essentially no more travel writing. In creating this mythic idea of the American West, Americans created a sense of self that was special and unique from all other places on Earth; while foreigners, in the twentieth century, who came to this land were disappointed to learn that the mythic West was gone.
The author has a lot of proof to back up his argument. He uses many different European writers to show how individuals outside of the United States viewed the American West; both those that enjoyed their time spent there and those that did not. His use of the European writers is especially effective because they are not attempting to create a special view of America, at least not the way American’s are and it is interesting to hear the problems some of the Europeans had even as they were making their way across the land to make money in the West.
Wrobel’s bias can be seen in his thesis. The idea that there is a feeling of a mythical American West, which could be an idea that he created for the purpose of this book. He is a British expatriate living in America and studying American history. That is going to inevitably put a slant on the way he views American Western history. However, it does not seem that that is his goal. He seems to have tried to back away from whatever biases he might bring to this study and viewed the material as objectively as possible. Although he does mention in the introduction that he uses an inordinately large amount of British writer’s in this book, which he does. As with most historical non-fiction authors, Wrobel presented his evidence and explained how each piece proved his thesis was accurate. This is the first book that has been read for this class that the author has really done a decent job of narrowing down his focus. He has a single point in time that he is attempting to discuss and he does not try and stray too far from that spot.
As a historical source this book is quite valuable. It reassess the way everyone looks at the American West and the myth it has become. The one big limitation this book has is that the author uses primarily only European writers. He does not venture out to see what travelers from other nations had to say about the American West during this time period. The book was enjoyable to read, but there were sections that could have been taken out that would have made it more so. The entire fifth chapter, save the beginning, could have been removed and the reader would still have understood the point the author was trying to make without getting an in-depth review of every regions travel guides. Overall, it is an effective source for American historians and sheds new light on the mythic West.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews