History

Why was gold found in California in 1848, at the exact moment when the Treaty ending the Mexican-American War was signed ? Americans saw it as a confirmation of Manifest Destiny, both a sign of God's election of their people and of the fact that the Mexicans did not deserve a land they were not able to work properly. Mexicans also had their explanation about why they did not find gold in California. Carlos Maria Bustamante, in his History of Mexico, suggests that missionaries hid the presence of gold to avoid the ruin of their missions like in Paraguay. In my paper, I re-interpret those explanations by offering a spatial and political history of the territory, which was then called Alta California, in the broader context of Mexican, US and Native American history. The fact that Americans settled in the Sierra foothills of what was legally a Mexican territory, then found gold and launched a global gold rush can be explained by a combination of chance and historical causality. Sutter's land grant was a prime cause, and had everything to do with how Mexican Californians tried to solve issues they faced as they were building their territorial project. In particular, Mexican Californians hoped Sutter's fort would help stall the increasing raids by Native groups at that time. Americans found gold partly because they were working where Californios did not, and because, by 1848, their labor community had evolved. And then, finding some gold did not necessarily mean that a gold rush would happen. In fact, after gold was found at Sutter's, he wanted to keep it a secret. But gold reached San Francisco and recently arrived Mormon pioneer Sam Brannan started shouting in the streets that gold had been found. San Francisco was only a very tiny village at the time, but the occupation by US troops because of the war made it national and then world news. Brannan opened a supply store for miners, and became rich. Therefore, only by understanding the communities living in California before 1848 can we better understand why and how the Gold Rush happened.

The United-States grew spatially after their independence, so historians have to choose between telling a history of what eventually – until today – became the territory of the United-States or focus on what were geographically the U.S. at any moment of their history. Looking from the Pacific coast allows to offer an alternative, by enhancing the distinction between space and territory as defined by the geographers. North America then becomes a space into which imperial formations tried to carve a territory. This perspective offers a way to close the gap between U.S. expansion on the continent and overseas and also allows to compare between the British, Spanish, Mexican and US empires in North America. It also connects settler colonialism and economic imperialism with the Pacific as the new frontier. As such, California set out to be at the same time a place of expansion and investment for the center – with boom and bust – and a place of temptation, of exoticism, which could offer a counter-model, an alternative. For a long time a periphery, California, the far West and the Pacific Coast started to tell central things about what the U.S. were becoming from urban shapes to a more complex color line.

Why was gold found in California gold in 1848, at the exact moment when the Treaty ending the
Mexican-American War was being signed ? Americans saw it as a confirmation of Manifest
Destiny, both a sign of God's election of their people and of the fact that the Mexicans did not
deserve a land they were not able to work properly. Mexicans also had their explanation about why
they did not find gold in California. Carlos Maria Bustamante, in his History of Mexico, suggests
that the missionaries hid the presence of gold to avoid the ruin of their missions like in Paraguay. In
my paper, I re-interpret those explanations by offering a spatial and political history of the territory
that was then called Alta California in the broader context of Mexican, US and Native American
history in the first half of the 19th century. The fact that Americans settled in the Sierra foothills of
what was legally a Mexican territory then, found gold and launched a global gold rush can be
explained by a combination of chance and historical causality. Sutter's land grant was a prime cause,
and had everything to do with how Mexican Californians tried to solve issues they were meeting as
they were building their territorial project. Raids by Native groups increased at that same moment
and they hoped Sutter's fort would help stall them. Americans found gold partly because they were
working where Californios did not, and because by 1848 their community of work had evolved.
And then, finding some gold did not necessarily mean that a gold rush would happen. In fact, after
gold was found at Sutter's, he wanted to keep it a secret. But gold reached San Francisco and
recently arrived Mormon pioneer Sam Brannan started shouting in the streets that gold had been
found. San Francisco was only a very tiny village at the time, but the occupation by US troops
because of the war made it national and then world news. Brannan opened a supply store for
miners, and became rich. Only by understanding the communities living in California before 1848
can we better understand why and how the Gold Rush happened, notwhithstanding chance.

Generally, the history of the United States is built on a narrative that is firmly rooted in the East, in the 13 colonies who rebelled against the British Crown, proclaimed their independence in 1776, were recognized as such in 1783 and who, as the United States, founded a new political model outside Europe. Flawed, tainted by slavery despite its democratic ideals, this model is presented as having broken down at the onset of the Civil War, before reinvented itself. However, approaches focusing on race, gender, and class, for example, have completed this narrative model and offered new ways of describing the United States, repositioning it socially and widening its scope beyond the white elites who long dominated the nation's history. This repositioning, or decentering, is also spatial, taking into account the spatial expansion of the United States and the integration of societies and territories that were not part of the original British colonies. In the manner of historian Karin Wulf's ongoing project 1 , the goal of this workshop is to portray a " vast early America " , made of interconnected regional histories, that is sensitive to the globalized history of the United States. In this workshop, we would like to contribute to this project through presentations that show how a perspective that is regional, even peripheral or considered as such, can shed new light on the construction of the United States.

1Guillaume de Saint-André et son œuvre, une vie du duc de Bretagne Jean IV de Montfort, le Livre du Bon Jehan, et une variante singulière du Jeu des échecs moralisé, n'était accessible que par des éditions du XVIII e et du XIX e siècle. Aujourd'hui, Jean-Michel Cauneau et ...