Abstract
A gang of historians has gunned down the “romantic West.” They have dismissed the notion of the West as a frontier of opportunity for all comers. The American West has been redefined as an arena of struggle involving complex relations of class, gender, ethnicity, and race. Western work camps and company towns existed as extensions of a global economy centered on the eastern United States. From the mid-19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, capital and people flowed into the West from Europe, Asia, and Mexico. In this internal periphery of U.S. capitalism, workers experienced the same type of exploitation and engaged in the same struggles as their brethren in other parts of the United States. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the coalfields of Colorado. The work camps and company towns that archaeologists excavate were loci of struggle, and historians cannot claim to understand them without considering these conflicts.
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McGuire, R.H., Reckner, P. The Unromantic West: Labor, capital, and struggle. Hist Arch 36, 44–58 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03374359
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03374359