Since Southern California\u2019s early growth is multi-faceted, historians have tried to analyze it in different ways. One of the main historical debates deals with the development related to the citrus industry. What was the most important factor for the region\u2019s expansion and why? How much did immigration play a role in region\u2019s growth? Some scholars, like Edward Bachus, argue for a traditional history of institutions impacting growth, which include irrigation, the railroad, and the Fruit Exchange. Similarly, William Deverell in\u201cThe Southern Pacific Railroad Survives the Pullman Strike of 1894\u201d uses a top-down approach to discuss the power of California\u2019s railroads in the midst of labor strikes (Deverell 183, 192). Other scholars argue instead that it was the labor force, such as Mexican immigrants, which drove the citrus industry\u2019s growth. Stacey Smith, in Freedom\u2019s Frontier<\/i>, offers a broader analysis on the state\u2019s labor and slavery in the 1800s by connecting them to similar national developments. National trends are also explained from the immigrants\u2019 perspective in James R. Barrett\u2019s \u201cAmericanization from the Bottom Up.\u201d Douglas Sackman seems to be in the middle of this debate because he emphasizes the citrus corporations\u2019 marketing as a significant growth factor in Orange Empire<\/i>, but he also recognizes the role of migrant workers. Samuel Truett, in Fugitive Landscapes<\/i>, can build on Sackman\u2019s work by viewing immigrants and native peoples as key contributing factors in the Southwest borderlands\u2019 development (Truett 129).<\/p>\n

Another related historical debate is one that considers the California Dream alongside efforts to establish successful Southern Californian communities. Was this dream attainable for everyone who lived in the state, why or why not? Should historians use cultural and social history, rather than economic history, for instance, to understand how communities developed and grew? Kevin Starr\u2019s Americans and the California Dream<\/i> discusses \u201cthe imaginative aspects of California\u2019s journey to identity\u201d by studying how settlers created and sought after their ideas of the dream (Starr vii). Many people pursued this dream but economic success came mostly to those who had power, money, or land. Starting with this idea of success, historians have studied Southern California\u2019s expansion from the perspective of booming citrus corporations (Ronald Tobey and Charles Wetherell). Yet, this method marginalizes laborers who were not able to make substantial profit from the railroad, real estate, or citrus (Smith). Some of my sources\u00a0including Slayton and Estes, Sackman, and Starr refer to key figures, often men, who shaped communities. However, scholars, such as Gilbert Gonzalez, Stephen O\u2019Neil, and Lisbeth Haas, have also identified Mexicans, and women in particular, as important figures in their communities. In my early research, there appears to be a general historiographical turn towards more of a cultural and social history of California\u2019s growth. Rather than viewing the history mainly through major institutions and themes like the railroad or the California Dream, recent scholars have reconstructed the story to shift the focus onto ordinary people and the spaces they inhabited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since Southern California\u2019s early growth is multi-faceted, historians have tried to analyze it in different ways. One of the main historical debates deals with the development related to the citrus industry. What was the most important factor for the region\u2019s expansion and why? How much did immigration play a role in region\u2019s growth? Some scholars, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":644,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions\/644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}