The purpose of this paper is to discuss, analyze and critique the book, Americans and the California Dream: 1850-1915, by Kevin Starr.
This book is a narrative of the development of California during the period 1850-1915. But it is also much more than that. It is a look at the literature written about the territory, as well as the literature produced by some of the area's leading citizens. And, most importantly, it is a chronicle of the leading citizens in California, whose diverse personalities reflected the respective eras in which they lived.
Chapter One, "Prophetic Patterns," deals with California under Spanish and later Mexican rule. It describes the beauty of California, and Starr describes many of the "foreigners," French, American and others, who visited the area and coveted it for their homelands. Two statements by the author sum up this desire on the part of outsiders, (French, British, Russians and Americans,) to take California away from the Latins. Starr says, "Racist contempt flawed the origins of American California in hatred, injustice and bloodshed. Tragically, one California was destroyed so that another might take its place" (21). And, the author asserts, "American California begins as an act of conquest climaxing a history of contempt" (21). What were the reasons for this contempt?
Foreign visitors such as Laperouse and Vancouver (French and British, respectively) visited the area when the Spanish mission system was still in force. Starr states that when Laperouse visited Mission San Carlos Borromeo, the visit was a paradigm of the European Enlightenment confronting a quasi-feudal civilization. Visitors to the area for the next fifty years (until 1836) continued to believe that "California needed intervention if it were to have a society worthy of its beauty" (4). California was a garden spot, an idyllic place whose climate is mainly Mediterranean. (Comparisons to the South of France were f...