Robbins Colony And Empire

Robbins, William G. Colony and Empire: The Capitalist Transformation of the American West. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1994.

Robbins’ Colony and Empire presents the west as a massive underdeveloped area that was envisioned as a source of enormous profit by businessman in the large financial centers of the western world. Following the revisionist “New Western” History model, Robbins views the history of the west without the usual romantic exceptionalism tendency attempting to show the “true” west. Robbins defines the west as from the ninety-eighth meridian west to the Pacific, not including Hawaii or Alaska. This is a massive area encompassing seventeen states. This area has many different complex geographic and cultural factors. Robbins defines his thesis on page three: “The movement of capital from points of accumulation to points of investment triggered mass migrations and disrupted indigenous populations worldwide, circumstances that reflect the totality of the modernizing forces that must be called “global capitalism”. For Robbins, understanding capitalism is essential to understanding the history of the west. Robbins argues the total ideology of capitalism is a social and political ideology, not just an economic factor, which was typified by the development of the American West. Robbins highlights the complexity of the capitalist networks in the west. Robbins believed the development of the West created a system of dependency. Robbins views the west as a place where foreign capital and investment dictated its development and a place of “greed, debasement and

exploitation” (12). Robbins ignores many factors to highlight this exploitation by external forces. Robbins follows a thematic approach using primarily secondary sources to address the profound changes. The book is very well researched, presenting separate case studies of how the west changed due to outside influence. To help gain perspective of the development of the west, Robbins analyzes the ideology and myth of the west, the role of industry to outside influence, the borderland issues with Mexico and Canada, the differences between the south and west regions, and the importance of urban areas in western development. It is a good critique of capitalism, and it shows the results from the lack of government regulation. Robbins writes that all the development of the West was inseparably linked to the evolution of capitalism is narrow minded. The arguments are provocative and intriguing but eventually become predictable and repetitive. Colony and Empire is well research and informative and provides an application of the new western revisionist model that is an excellent spring board for discussion of the West. Robbins does not prove his thesis because to view the West only by analyzing power, exploitation and class structure, the greater influence of the region is omitted. Robbins does a good job within the parameters he sets, however, the west is simply too complex a concept to explain in this manner.

William Tyler Grove Appalachian State University