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Imperial Metropolis: Los Angeles, Mexico, and the Borderlands of American Empire, 1865–1941 (The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History) by [Jessica M. Kim]

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Jessica M. Kim

Imperial Metropolis: Los Angeles, Mexico, and the Borderlands of American Empire, 1865–1941 (The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History) Kindle Edition

by Jessica M. Kim (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

12 ratings

Part of: The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History (17 books)

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In this compelling narrative of capitalist development and revolutionary response, Jessica M. Kim reexamines the rise of Los Angeles from a small town to a global city against the backdrop of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, Gilded Age economics, and American empire. It is a far-reaching transnational history, chronicling how Los Angeles boosters transformed the borderlands through urban and imperial capitalism at the end of the nineteenth century and how the Mexican Revolution redefined those same capitalist networks into the twentieth.

Kim draws on archives in the United States and Mexico to argue that financial networks emerging from Los Angeles drove economic transformations in the borderlands, reshaped social relations across wide swaths of territory, and deployed racial hierarchies to advance investment projects across the border. However, the Mexican Revolution, with its implicit critique of imperialism, disrupted the networks of investment and exploitation that had structured the borderlands for sixty years, and reconfigured transnational systems of infrastructure and trade. Kim provides the first history to connect Los Angeles's urban expansionism with more continental and global currents, and what results is a rich account of real and imagined geographies of city, race, and empire.

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292 pages
Language

English
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The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date

August 9, 2019
File size

17587 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Kim is deft in tying together the histories of Mexico, the US-Mexican borderlands, and the US West. This engaging and timely book is a welcome addition to the literature on these various subjects.--CHOICE

Offers useful andthought-provoking insights for historians interested in imperialism, urban development, capitalism, and race, as well as for scholars of revolutionary Mexico and U.S.-Latin American relations.--Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Imperial Metropolis places Mexico at the center of a conversation on the changing state of American expansion, a historical reality that scholars of American empire—drawn to Hawaii and the Philippines in the 1890s—have generally missed. It will certainly spark new and important conversations related to the borderlands and Southern Californian historiography ... and explains how Los Angeles became a city with global reach and power via its unique history and positioning in the borderlands.--Diplomatic History

An ambitious, highly original, and captivating study. Kim's wide range of U.S. and Mexican archival sources allows her to present a fine-grained contrapuntal history that carefully heeds the making, operating, and unmaking of empire on the ground in both Los Angeles and several Mexican regions. Written in a compelling, engaging style, it is is an outstanding history of Los Angeles that convincingly demonstrates thatthe "city of quartz" is also a city of empire.--H-Diplo

--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Review

This is an excellent book--Kim is a beautiful writer, her characters are fascinating, and her arguments about how Mexico shaped the City of Angels make a robust contribution to borderlands history.--Geraldo Cadava, Northwestern University

--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07PWJ5S7F
Publisher ‏ : ‎ The University of North Carolina Press (August 9, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 9, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 17587 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 292 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #875,533 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #221 in History of U.S. Immigration
- #224 in History of Mexico
- #396 in Urban Sociology

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4.9 out of 5

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Dorian

FACTS, FACTS, FACTS

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 25, 2019

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I always had a deep feeling of unease when reading accounts of how things came about during the history of America. Professor Kim validated that feeling by researching and compiling a litany of facts dealing with the attempted annexation of Mexican borderlands south of Los Angeles and the one-sided views that the movers and shakers of early 20th Century L.A. held towards their neighbors. They basically wanted to reap all the financial rewards from the hard work of the Mexican laborers. The opportunity of working themselves to death for the good of the giant L.A.-based companies should be all the reward that the workers required. Nothing much has changed in 100+ years. I found the story to be very compelling and sad, until the awakening brought about by the Revolution. I highly recommend this book and feel it should be included in curriculum, if not made mandatory reading for all high school students.

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Tascha F.

Worthy Read!!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 28, 2021

I loved this book. Reading Imperial Metropolis: Los Angeles, Mexico, and the Borderlands of American Empire, 1865-1941 gave me a clear understanding of how people like Doheny and the Otis/Chandler clan exported to Mexico our imperialist recipe for appropriating and profiting from land. While providing improvements and infrastructure for the stated purpose of modernizing and enriching Mexico, they ultimately extract an outsized quantity of wealth, labor, and suffering.

Communally held land -or commons- existed long before communism did. Land and their labor were the only means of production for agrarian people, and much land had been communally owned by the people. The "improvements" and infrastructure capitalists created on appropriated Mexican land did generate great financial wealth for themselves, but these improvements do so over and over again at the expense of those whose land they must take in order to extract said wealth. Ultimately, they also called upon the resources of the United States military to protect what was primarily their own interests, which, had the U.S. followed through, would have cost people on this side of the border much in money and blood. This book provides a close look at the precise methods used by the actors in Los Angeles with respect to their attempt to build and then ensure the defense of an empire in Mexico.

It did suffer from repetition that should have been edited out (which might have knocked it down to four stars, but I do really value the contribution the book makes). At times, I didn't mind the repetition and understood the purpose of it. The last couple of chapters suffered from the most unnecessary repetition. However the syntax is otherwise extremely strong and beautifully spare, and the arguments are organized well around information. I look forward to seeing what this author does next. As a high school teacher and a librarian, I would strongly recommend it to any teacher who wants to learn more about the topic. You could build a lot of curriculum, role plays, etc. around this book. Any interested high school student would enjoy it, and reading it would support their research.

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