Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126
Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127
Chicago: Domesticator or Destroyer
I have gained a vastly different view of the city of Chicago through the reading that I have done in Nature’s Metropolis by William Cronon. The historical insight that I have gained on the development of Chicago as not only a metropolis, but also as the intersection between eastern dominance and western development was quite eye opening. Prior to reading Cronon’s explanation of the city; I had generally thought of Chicago as one of the larger, older cities (urban areas) on the east coast (in the same general grouping as New York, Washington and Philadelphia), but not as the “gateway to the West”. If anyone had asked me where the West began before this reading I would have immediately and without much thought said, “California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. I never imagined that Chicago (in the East) is where the West actually began, which is why I love the study of history. Every new piece of historical information that is absorbed by a history major (such as myself) becomes a building block that is leads to critically thinking about new issues, asking new questions; which leads to more historical interest, investigation and research. I believe that the significant geographical importance of Chicago to American trade and expansion was better realized after the elevation of the city (starting in 1849), the introduction of functioning waterways and the introduction and of railway system that centered around the city’s location. In our age of rapid technological development, it is relatively easy to naively view the landscape, transportation systems (roads, tunnels, bridges, and waters) around us as “natural” because we (modern age inhabitants) are used to how the world is arranged around us. In reality there are few, if any areas in America that have not been developed, manipulated, transformed, redirected or untouched by humans with a specific economic purpose in mind. I appreciated the dual geography/ history perspective on this week’s reading that I believe my classmate @mvanderdussen was describing which is the whether the benefits that the city had in geographical features were “natural” or manipulated by those who wanted the land from the native people that previously resided there.While expansion in trade and transportation may have been a “miraculous blessing” for some individuals, it also resulted in the pollution, abuse and destruction of the actual land that America was established on. With that in mind was Chicago really where the West began or where it ended?