Robbins, William G. Colony and Empire: The Capitalist Transformation of the American West. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1994.

Robbins’ Colony and Empire presents the west as a massive underdeveloped area that was

envisioned as a source of enormous profit by businessman in the large financial centers of the western

world. Following the revisionist “New Western” History model, Robbins views the history of the west

without the usual romantic exceptionalism tendency attempting to show the “true” west.

Robbins defines the west as from the ninety-eighth meridian west to the Pacific, not including

Hawaii or Alaska. This is a massive area encompassing seventeen states. This area has many different

complex geographic and cultural factors.

Robbins defines his thesis on page three: “The movement of capital from points of

accumulation to points of investment triggered mass migrations and disrupted indigenous populations

worldwide, circumstances that reflect the totality of the modernizing forces that must be called “global

capitalism”. For Robbins, understanding capitalism is essential to understanding the history of the west.

Robbins argues the total ideology of capitalism is a social and political ideology, not just an economic

factor, which was typified by the development of the American West. Robbins highlights the complexity

of the capitalist networks in the west.

Robbins believed the development of the West created a system of dependency. Robbins views

the west as a place where foreign capital and investment dictated its development and a place of

“greed, debasement and exploitation” (12). Robbins ignores many factors to highlight this exploitation

by external forces.

Robbins follows a thematic approach using primarily secondary sources to address the

profound changes. The book is very well researched, presenting separate case studies of how the west

changed due to outside influence. To help gain perspective of the development of the west, Robbins

analyzes the ideology and myth of the west, the role of industry to outside influence, the borderland

issues with Mexico and Canada, the differences between the south and west regions, and the

importance of urban areas in western development.

It is a good critique of capitalism, and it shows the results from the lack of government

regulation. Robbins writes that all the development of the West was inseparably linked to the evolution

of capitalism is narrow minded. The arguments are provocative and intriguing but eventually become

predictable and repetitive.

Colony and Empire is well research and informative and provides an application of the new

western revisionist model that is an excellent spring board for discussion of the West. Robbins does not

prove his thesis because to view the West only by analyzing power, exploitation and class structure, the

greater influence of the region is omitted. Robbins does a good job within the parameters he sets,

however, the west is simply too complex a concept to explain in this manner.

William Tyler Grove

Appalachian State University