History of Washington State and the Pacific Northwest (HSTAA 432)
Summer 2024
T/Th 9:40-11:50 a.m.
Raitt Hall, Room 116
Dr. Ross Coen
E-mail: rcoen@uw.edu
Office: Smith 108-B
Course Description:
History of Washington State and the Pacific Northwest (HSTAA 432) is an upper-division course on regional history. It focuses primarily on the territory that today is the states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, with additional attention to British Columbia, Alaska, western Montana, and California, from the mid-18th to the late 20th century. The course places regional developments in both national and global contexts in an effort to appreciate how the Northwest, nation, and world affected one another.
The course considers Pacific Northwest history over two broad eras. Part I, “Contacts and Contests: Non-Indians, Indians, and Resources, 1741–1900,” considers how, within the context of colonization by Europe and the United States, different groups of peoples interacted with one another and tried to assert or retain control over the region. It examines Native peoples of the Northwest; the arrival, influence, and impact of European and American explorers, fur traders, missionaries, and settlers; and the efforts of the United States at controlling a large part of the region by asserting authority over the land and Native societies. Part II, “The American Northwest: Urban and Industrial Growth, 1846–2000,” considers the emergence of a modern U.S. region by looking at economic, political, social, urban, and cultural developments during the later 19th and 20th centuries.
Three connected sets of themes provide a focus for the course. One is the changing circumstances of and relationships between the diverse peoples and cultures of the region. The chronology of the course begins with the advent of European and U.S. colonizers in the 18th century, and attention is paid as well to the experiences of both Native peoples in the Northwest and the assorted, multiracial newcomers who arrived from other parts of North America and from Europe and Asia. Another set of themes revolves around peoples’ uses for and attitudes toward natural resources. Of course, diverse groups and cultures had different uses for and ideas about such things as forests, fish, and land, and these views changed over time. It is important to understand how some peoples were able to impose their values and uses for natural resources upon others. The third set of themes, intimately linked to the first two, is how a sense of regional identity evolved over time in the Pacific Northwest. Two aspects of this identity especially preoccupy us—the question of who supposedly belonged and did not belong in the region, and the matter of how regional residents related to and identified with the natural environs of a distinctive place. To a large extent, the answers to these questions were shaped by the agendas of the many newcomers who came to colonize, settle, and exploit opportunity in the Northwest. One way of tracing regional identity is to examine different kinds of writing in and about the Pacific Northwest.
There is one required book for the course. Please acquire a copy if you have not done so already. Be advised that electronic copies of the book may be available via UW Libraries. Please make sure you are reading the 2nd edition of this book that was published in 2022.
Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle’s Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2022).