This article reviews the reception of the New Western History, whose emergence coincided with the history and culture wars of the late twentieth century. I analyze debates and arguments created by revisionists’ writings, both within the walls of academia and beyond. The discussions which the movement triggered within the historical profession led to exceptional press coverage that attested to the central place the West occupies in the American imagination. Similarly, the uproar generated by the 1991 Smithsonian’s West as America exhibition further demonstrated Americans’ singular attachment to the story of the West as the creation myth of the nation. Just as the culture wars of the period hinged on a definition of an American identity, the reappraisal of the western past was perceived, by some, as questioning what it meant to be a westerner and, ultimately, an American.

This paper aims to trace the evolution of the debate over wilderness protection, from the “idea” of wilderness to a national policy of preservation signed into law by President Johnson in 1964. Central to this evolution was Wilderness Society’s activist Howard Zahniser, who started campaigning actively for a wilderness preservation law in the late 1940s. Relying on a pragmatic approach, Zahniser and advocates of wilderness protection favored debates and compromises, including with natural resource industries, in an effort to conciliate both economic uses and protection. The wide bipartisan support that this endeavor resulted in is remarkable in light of the polarization of American environmental politics from the late 1970s on. Most significantly, the Wilderness Act enlarged federal responsibilities in terms of wilderness preservation, especially as it gave Congress power to designate wilderness areas through the National Wilderness Preservation System, therefore reinforcing the federal presence in the American West.

This article aims to appraise the populist strain that has characterized the American West since the late 19th century. Populism, as a political movement, was born in the South and West of the United States. This “prairie populism” allowed the People’s party to score quite a few electoral victories in the 1890s. While the party’s influence waned rapidly, outbursts of populism have animated the West since then. In spite of the centrality of the “people”—and its opposition with “the elite”—as the major definitional element that binds these various expressions of populism together, 21st-century western populism has little in common with its late 19th-century counterpart. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the evolution of western populism, from the People’s party to the late 1970s Sagebrush Rebellion and the People for Constitutional Freedom. Attention is paid to each movement’s emphasis on the “people” as the element at the core of their rhetoric. In addition, this study reveals how this key element has evolved throughout the 20th century, and in what ways today’s populism seeks to defend the interests of a much more limited group. Finally, a close reading of the goals and achievements of each movement offers a better understanding of this evolution from left-wing to right-wing populism.

On Monday, August 14, 2017, protesters toppled the statue of a Confederate soldier in Durham, North Carolina. Dedicated to the “memory of the boys who wore grey,” the statue had been erected in 1924 and, like many others of its kind, stood outside a government building. The event came in the aftermath of the violent clash between white nationalists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, two days before. The “Unite the Right” march had been organized to protest a plan to remove a ...

L’Ouest américain est souvent présenté comme ayant un statut à part dans la construction de l’identité américaine. Ecrivant à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle, le père fondateur de l’histoire de l’Ouest, Frederick Jackson Turner, considère que la singularité du caractère américain résulte de l’expérience de la Frontière. C’est en participant au peuplement de l’Ouest, au contact de la Frontière, loin de l’Est et de l’Europe, que l’Américain se serait construit. Cette "exception américaine" ("exceptionalism") est mise à mal par les générations suivantes d’historiens. Les études de la deuxième moitié du vingtième siècle insistent, notamment, sur la diversité du peuplement et de la population de l’Ouest, nourris de vagues successives d’immigration. La conception de l’Ouest en tant que région marque alors le passage à une histoire régionale, loin de la vision turnérienne, qui assimilait l’histoire de la nation à celle de l’Ouest. Plus récemment, les spécialistes du domaine ont cherché à replacer l’Ouest dans un contexte international, en le présentant comme un carrefour où se sont croisés des peuples venus non seulement de l’Est, mais aussi du Sud, du Nord, et de l’Ouest. Véritable point de rencontre de nations et d’empires dès l’époque coloniale, région aux frontières internationales, l’Ouest semble se nourrir, aujourd’hui encore, de ces relations, contacts et interactions entre les peuples.

Broadcast on H.Β.Ο. from 2004 to 2006, Deadwood is an American western television series that depicts the construction and transformation of a miners’ camp into a booming town in South Dakota in the 1870s. Being in Indian territory, the camp is not part of the U.S.A., and there is no law but the law of the strongest. Yet, its inhabitants soon realize that they need to curb some of their tendencies toward anarchy and savagery and embrace certain rudiments of civilized society for their survival. The arrival of the telegraph, the development of the press, and the opening of a bank, among other elements, are supposed to accompany the passage from anarchy to democracy, just as the establishment of an informal local government is meant to make the community lawful Discovering the ecology of this nascent community, the viewer learns as much from the margins as from the thoroughfare, both being crucial in the development of the camp, despite their conflicting statuses. Yet, ultimately, it becomes evident that change and progress are not wanted, in Deadwood, and the series, deviating from most of its genre’s predecessors, seems to blur the frontier between savagery and civilization, in an attempt to debunk America’s mythologized past.