A big history of North America : from Montezuma to Monroe / Kevin Jon Fernlund.
Material type:
TextPublisher: Columbia, Missouri : The University of Missouri Press, [2022]Description: x, 376 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780826222657
- 082622265X
- 9780826222749
- 0826222749
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 970 F365 | Available | 33111011284151 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
The special relationship between the United Kingdom, an established and secure power, and the United States, a rising one, began after the War of 1812, as the former enemies sought accommodation with, rather than the annihilation of, one another. At the same time, Mexico, also a rising power, was not so fortunate. Its relationship with Spain, an established but declining power, turned hostile with Spain's final exit from North America after Mexico's War of Independence, leaving its former colony isolated, internally unstable, and vulnerable to external attack. Significantly, Mexico posed little threat to its northern neighbor. By the third decade of the eighteenth century, then, the fate of North America was largely discernable.
Nevertheless, the three-century journey to get to this point had been anything but predictable. The United States' rise as a regional power was very much conditioned by constantly shifting transcontinental, transpacific, and above all transatlantic factors, all of which influenced North America's three interactive cultural spheres: the Indigenous, the Hispano, and the Anglo. And while the United States profoundly shaped the history of Canada and Mexico, so, too, did these two transcontinental countries likewise shape the course of U.S. history.
In this ground-breaking work, Kevin Fernlund shows us that any society's social development is directly related to its own social power and, just as crucially, to the protective extension or destructive intrusion of the social power of other societies.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
On method -- On asymmetry -- The Renaissance explores the East Coast -- The Enlightenment explores the West Coast -- A short history of cultural evolution -- The two Mexicos -- Mexico's axial age -- The two Spains -- Neo-Europes and middle grounds -- Transatlantic wars and transcontinental treks -- The Thucydides trap -- and the great escape -- The clinched fist and the invisible hand.
"This book looks at America's initial rise to power and considers what made its relatively short path to hemispheric dominance possible. However, it does so within a continental context, and therefore begins with the conquest of the Aztec Empire of Mexico by Spain's Hernando Cortés. But unlike a typical history survey, this book tracks and measures over time the sources of social power - the abilities of a particular society "to get things done," in the archaeologist and historian Ian Morris's apt formulation, including the projection of military force. And it has tried to do so by placing America's rise in a continental as well as a transatlantic context"-- Provided by publisher.