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In the mid-nineteenth century, explorers headed out to sea, hoping to claim new islands for the United States. One seemed promising: “These islands are small, high and rocky, barren and uninviting to the last degree, yet out of them has come wealth to stagger the dreams of oriental imagination.” These islands held an extremely valuable… MORE
On the eve of the Spanish-American War (1898), African Americans lived as second-class citizens. During the Jim Crow era, they lived separately from white Southerners, using facilities that were anything but equal. While war presented hardship, suffering, and strife, for African American men, it also presented an opportunity. Participating in one of America’s wars was… MORE
Instead, we focus on two trans-Pacific trade routes in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries: the galleon trade between Manila and Acapulco and maritime fur trade between the Pacific Northwest and China. These trade routes moved goods, but also peoples, cultures, and ideas across and throughout the Pacific.