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Reviews
Alaska: An American Colony
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By Stephen Haycox
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University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2002. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 392 pages. $29.95 cloth.
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Reviewed by by Kathryn Morse
Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont
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Alaska: An American Colony represents an impressive achievement
in Alaskan history. Stephen Haycox concisely narrates the Alaskan
past from European contact to the present with remarkable depth
and detail. More importantly, he moves beyond narrative to argue
convincingly and eloquently that Alaskan history has a clear central
theme. Despite Alaskans' valiant assertions of their independence,
frontier spirit, self-reliance, and self-sufficiency, since European
contact Alaska has been, and remains, a colony, dependent on outside
forces, particularly those of the U.S. government and U.S. and international
corporate capital. Alaskans bemoan their subjugation to the intrusive
power of distant governments and corporations, but in doing so they
deny their own history. Euro-American Alaska has never been independent
of such forces.
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1
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The forty-ninth state is far from exceptional in this regard. Its history, Haycox asserts, is defined by the same themes that characterize the history of the American West as a whole: the persistence of Native peoples and their struggle for sovereignty, the development of an economy based on the extraction of natural resources by outside corporations, and the power of the federal government. Haycox further argues, against the assertions of his fellow Alaskans, that their dependence on the outside world is not only the imposition of federal and corporate forces beyond their control but is also of their own making. Alaska's colonial status is in part the product of Alaskans' own "desire to replicate in the North the material and institutional nature of American culture" (p. 316). Alaskans' demands for economic development, modern services, and all the trappings of a consumer-based American life have created a political economy that can survive only through massive investment and support from outside. |
2
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The evidence to support these arguments begins in the seven chapters of part 1, in which Haycox presents a concise, detailed, and compelling history of the oft-ignored role of the Russian American Company (RAC) in colonizing Alaska. The RAC's successes and failures hinged on the same problems that shaped other New World colonies: supply, funding, relations with Natives, labor, and trade competition with other European nations and the United States. The Russians' brief sojourn defined Alaska's borders, left a limited cultural legacy, and set the stage for the U.S. struggle to remake Alaska as an American colony. |
3
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Part 2 turns to American Alaska. This, argues Haycox, is also a colonial history. "What happens in Alaska," he writes, "is overwhelmingly a function of forces and decisions made outside Alaska" (p. 169). In six chapters and an epilogue, he details developments in the mining, fishing, and oil industries, in politics and tourism, and in Native Alaskan culture, economy, subsistence, and land claims. Haycox gives concise accounts of the crucial historical shifts that accompanied the Progressive Era, World War II, statehood, the oil boom, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and the rise of environmentalism. |
4
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This compelling and readable book beautifully balances detail with narrative scope. It covers almost every pertinent topic, though a more wide-ranging discussion of tourism might have even further illustrated the book's well-proven themes. Alaska: An American Colony will quickly become an indispensable source for scholars and students alike and the first place to turn for any reader in search of the definitive volume on Alaskan history. |
5
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