Pacific Eldorado

PACIFIC ELDORADO PACIFIC ELDORADO A HISTORY OF GREATER CALIFORNIA California‘s rich and complex history has long been shaped by its relationship with the vast ocean along its western shores. Pacific Eldorado: A History of Greater California presents the first comprehensive text to explore the entire sweep of California‘s past in relationship to the maritime world of the Pacific Basin. Noted historian Thomas J. Osborne dispels the commonly held notion of pre-Gold Rush California as a remote and isolated backwater. He traces the evolution of America‘s most populous state from the time of prehistoric Asian seafarers and sixteenth-century Spanish explorers through to its emergence in the modern world as a region whose unmatched resources and global influence have rendered it a veritable super state — a Greater California whose history has far exceeded its geographical boundaries. Interspersed throughout the text are “Pacific Profiles,” brief chronicles of notable figures who have made an impact on the state‘s history. At once scholarly and accessible, Pacific Eldorado offers a strikingly original interpretation of the origins and evolution of an extraordinary American state.

PACIFIC ELDORADO PACIFIC ELDORADO A HISTORY OF GREATER CALIFORNIA California‘s rich and complex history has long been shaped by its relationship with the vast ocean along its western shores. Pacific Eldorado: A History of Greater California presents the first comprehensive text to explore the entire sweep of California‘s past in relationship to the maritime world of the Pacific Basin. Noted historian Thomas J. Osborne dispels the commonly held notion of pre-Gold Rush California as a remote and isolated backwater. He traces the evolution of America‘s most populous state from the time of prehistoric Asian seafarers and sixteenth-century Spanish explorers through to its emergence in the modern world as a region whose unmatched resources and global influence have rendered it a veritable super state — a Greater California whose history has far exceeded its geographical boundaries. Interspersed throughout the text are “Pacific Profiles,” brief chronicles of notable figures who have made an impact on the state‘s history. At once scholarly and accessible, Pacific Eldorado offers a strikingly original interpretation of the origins and evolution of an extraordinary American state.

Literary Nonfiction. California Interest. Native American Studies. This trailblazing history focuses on a single year, 1858, the year of the Fraser River gold rush--the third great mass migration of gold seekers after the Californian and Australian rushes in search of a new El Dorado. Marshall's history becomes an adventure, prospecting the rich pay streaks of British Columbia's "founding" event and the gold fever that gripped populations all along the Pacific Slope. Marshall unsettles many of our most taken-for-granted assumptions: he shows how foreign miner-militias crossed the 49th parallel, taking the law into their own hands, and conducting extermination campaigns against Indigenous peoples while forcibly claiming the land. Drawing on new evidence, Marshall explores the three principal cultures of the goldfields--those of the fur trade (both Native and the Hudson's Bay Company), Californian, and British world views. The year 1858 was a year of chaos unlike any other in British Columbia and American Pacific Northwest history. It produced not only violence but the formal inauguration of colonialism, Native reserves and, ultimately, the expansion of Canada to the Pacific Slope. Among the haunting legacies of this rush are the cryptic place names that remain--such as American Creek, Texas Bar, Boston Bar, and New York Bar--while the unresolved question of Indigenous sovereignty continues to claim the land.