Why the West Is Lost

Abstract

WO recent critiques of history textbooks lament that West is misinterpreted when it is not simply ignored. Richard White says that textbooks the 'nation' is metonymically reduced two regions: Northeast and Midwest. The Far West and other regions then are seen as quaint and backward deviants from norm. Patricia Nelson Limerick complains that textbooks do not see West as an integral and formative element history. For example, American colonial history' (extravagantly named) rarely pays much attention Spanish colonies, several of which were West, that eventually became part of United States. In short, history textbooks leave out much of America.I This is news? In i893, a full century ago, Charles F. Lummis deplored the hopelessness of trying get from any or all English text-books a just picture of Spanish hero New World. In 1920 Herbert Eugene Bolton and Thomas Maitland Marshall seemed answer Lummis's call by publishing a most unusual textbook, The Colonization of North America, in response, they said, to a clear demand for a text written from standpoint of North America as a whole, and giving a more adequate treatment of colonies of nations other