Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush

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Overview

Winner of the Bancroft Prize

The world of the California Gold Rush that comes down to us through fiction and film is one of half-truths. In this brilliant work of social history, Susan Lee Johnson enters the well-worked diggings of Gold Rush history and strikes a rich lode.

Johnson explores the dynamic social world created by the Gold Rush in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Stockton, charting the surprising ways in which the conventions of identity—ethnic, national, and sexual—were reshaped. With a keen eye for character and story, she shows us how this peculiar world evolved over time, and how our cultural memory of the Gold Rush took root.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393320992
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/17/2000
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	466
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Susan Lee Johnson is Harry Reid Endowed Chair for the History of the Intermountain West at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Table of Contents

	List of Illustrations	9
	Preface	11
	Prologue: Joaquin Murrieta and the Bandits	25
Part I	Rush
Chapter 1	On the Eve of Emigration	57
Part II	Boom
Chapter 2	Domestic Life in the Diggings	99
Chapter 3	Bulls, Bears, and Dancing Boys	141
Chapter 4	Mining Gold and Making War	185
Part III	Bust
Chapter 5	Dreams That Died	237
Chapter 6	The Last Fandango	275
	Epilogue: Telling Tales	315
	Notes	345
	Selected Bibliography	425
	Index	449

Editorial Reviews

"A must-read…Briskly, vividly written, acute in observation and use of anecdote."

Choice

"Johnson puts forward a perspective on the Gold Rush far different from many stories and legends of yore…A provocative, eye-opening book."

Sacremento Bee

"Meticulously researched, precise, and lively…Roaring Camp offers a compelling portrait of the ways in which the experience of life in the diggings profoundly affected and altered American ideas about manhood and society."

The American Scholar

"An exemplary work of imaginative, innovative, and sensitive historical scholarship…Beautifully, even lyrically written, it opens many new insights in western U.S. history."

David G. Gutierrez

"Roaring Camp deepens our understanding of continental conquest. Beautifully researched, vividly written, and compassionately argued, it also reveals the Gold Rush as a fascinating theater of human behavior."

Times Literary Supplement

Roaring Camp deepens our understanding of continental conquest. Beautifully researched, vividly written, and compassionately argued, it also reveals the Gold Rush as a fascinating theater of human behavior.--Times Literary Supplement

Johnson puts forward a perspective on the Gold Rush far different from many stories and legends of yore...A provocative, eye-opening book.-- "Sacremento Bee"

Meticulously researched, precise, and lively...Roaring Camp offers a compelling portrait of the ways in which the experience of life in the diggings profoundly affected and altered American ideas about manhood and society.--The American Scholar

A must-read...Briskly, vividly written, acute in observation and use of anecdote.--Choice

An exemplary work of imaginative, innovative, and sensitive historical scholarship...Beautifully, even lyrically written, it opens many new insights in western U.S. history.--David G. Gutierrez, University of California, San Diego

From the Publisher

The California Gold Rush is commonly identified with the peculiarly American movement of Manifest Destiny, but as Johnson reveals in this informative study of the period, the Gold Rush was in fact one of the most cosmopolitan and multicultural events of the 19th century. Mexicans, French, Chinese, African-Americans, Chileans and Miwok Indians all panned for gold alongside their WASP counterparts in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. The collision of these cultures sometimes led to humorous misunderstandings (as when Chinese miners mirthfully watched a white colleague struggle to use chopsticks), but just as frequently it produced ugly crimes, like when Mexican prospector Joaquin Murrieta was assaulted and evicted from his mining claim by jealous whites. Complicating relations in the mines was the almost complete absence of women; Johnson shows how men of all races found themselves reassessing gender roles in ways that had everything to do with ethnicity and cultural hegemony. For example, Anglo miners tended to feminize Chinese and French men, who made their fortunes in laundry and cooking as often as in mining gold. Johnson skillfully investigates the ramifications of these social pressures, though at times she surrenders to the ivory tower habit of interpreting the interpretations, analyzing the discourse about events instead of the events themselves. Hers is an intensely academic brand of social history: readers will find phrases like "homosocial," "gendered meanings" and "constructions of race" liberally sprinkled throughout the text. Underneath the jargon, however, is a valuable study of the complex, often troubled societies that contributed to one of America's great national mythologies. 15 photos, 1 map. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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