A01=Karen R. Merrill
american history
american west
Author_Karen R. Merrill
Category=LNS
Category=NHK
Category=RNF
cattle
environment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
federal government
federal land agencies
frontier
government control
grazing lands
history
land administration
land management
land rights
land use
modern west
nature
political science
politics
property rights
protest
public grazing
public lands
public range
ranchers
ranching
range
sagebrush rebellions
settlers
settling the west
social issues
state building
united states
wild west
Product details
- ISBN 9780520228627
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Jul 2002
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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The history of the American West is a history of struggles over land, and none has inspired so much passion and misunderstanding as the conflict between ranchers and the federal government over public grazing lands. Drawing upon neglected sources from organized ranchers, this is the first book to provide a historically based explanation for why the relationship between ranchers and the federal government became so embattled long before modern environmentalists became involved in the issue. Reconstructing the increasingly contested interpretations of the meaning of public land administration, "Public Lands and Political Meaning" traces the history of the political dynamics between ranchers and federal land agencies, giving us a new look at the relations of power that made the modern West. Although a majority of organized ranchers supported government control of the range at the turn of the century, by midcentury these same organizations often used a virulently antifederal discourse that fueled many a political fight in Washington and that still runs deep in American politics today.
In analyzing this shift, Merrill shows how profoundly people's ideas about property wove their way into the political language of the debates surrounding public range policy. As she unravels the meaning of this language, Merrill demonstrates that different ideas about property played a crucial role in perpetuating antagonism on both sides of the fence. In addition to illuminating the origins of the 'sagebrush rebellions' in the American West, this book also persuasively argues that political historians must pay more attention to public land management issues as a way of understanding tensions in American state-building.
Karen R. Merrill is Assistant Professor of History at Williams College and editor of The Modern Worlds of Business and Industry: Cultures, Technology, Labor (1998).
