| |
 |
|
There have been many books published on lynching in the United States but only a handful include more than a cursory glance to the Western region of the nation. When they do, the information is usually out of date or inaccurate. Lynching in the West began as an effort to expand the historical record in one of these states, and in doing so, discovered that contrary to the vast majority of published texts and histories on the region, that frontier justice and vigilantism were not a racially neutral set of practices in the American West. In order to support such a claim, the book includes a detailed appendix, assembled by the author, of individual cases of lynching and other forms of summary execution. The appended case list reveals for the first time, that in California, more Latinos and persons of color died at the hands of the angry mob than did those of northern European descent. And of all those groups touched by this history, Lynching in the West forcibly demonstrates that Latinos of Mexican and Latin American descent were more likely to be lynched than any other racial or ethnic group. |
|
| |
The book then traces back through eighteenth and nineteenth century theories of race, nationality and ethnicity, in order to foreground their specific impact on a number of Western communities, and Western expansionism more generally. Lynching in the West takes an interdisciplinary approach to these questions, and its analysis is at its strongest when it looks to the point, be it object, text, or image, where multiple disciplines intersect; as in a lynching case where newspaper accounts, photographic images, personal journals, and scrapbooks combine to give a broader understanding of the event in question. By comparing details gleaned from such myriad sources, Lynching in the West is able to demonstrate that nineteenth century racial formations shaped how many of these communities were conceptualized, racialized, visualized, and ultimately marginalized in the history of the West.
The assembled case lists include Anglo-Americans, Australians, and Europeans from over a dozen countries, but taken as a whole, it reveals that, as regrettable as it may be, lynching and other forms of community driven violence were directly linked to the creation of the "Anglo American" as a national type.
From the vigilance committee to the antilynching movement, lynching has touched nearly every community and continues to serve as a catalyst for thinking about race, ethnicity, and national identity today. In revisiting this seemingly distant past, contemporary readers will be surprised to learn that debates about securing national boarders, racial and ethnic identity, and even questions of equality under the law, are anything but new.
Order Book |
|
