United States
£ GBP
Alaska often looms large as a remote, wild place with endless resources and endlessly independent, resourceful people. Yet it has always been part of larger stories: the movement of Indigenous peoples from Asia into the Americas and their contact with and accommodation to Western culture; the spread of European political economy to the New World; the expansion of American capitalism and culture; and the impacts of climate change.
In this updated classic, distinguished historian Stephen Haycox surveys the state's cultural, political, economic, and environmental past, examining its contemporary landscape and setting the region in a broader, global context. Tracing Alaska's transformation from the early post-contact period through the modern era, Haycox explores the ever-evolving relationship between Native Alaskans and the settlers and institutions that have dominated the area, highlighting Native agency, advocacy, and resilience. Throughout, he emphasizes the region's systemic dependence on both federal support and outside corporate investment in natural resources – furs, gold, copper, salmon, oil – and offers a less romantic, more complex history that acknowledges the broader national and international contexts of Alaska's past.
Stephen Haycox is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He is author of Frigid Embrace: Politics, Economics, and Environment in Alaska and Battleground Alaska: Fighting Federal Power in America's Last Wilderness and coeditor of An Alaska Anthology: Interpreting the Past.
"Deeply and methodically researched, carefully and accurately presented, Haycox's argument is clear: Alaska's people have been relatively powerless to determine their future, despite being the ones who best know Alaska. As debate continues over the exploitation of Alaska's remaining oilfields, this is a point of view that must be heard."
– Booklist
"For anyone wishing to understand why Alaska is the place it is today, Alaska: An American Colony is likely the best single source of information and analysis."
– Anchorage Daily News
"Interspersed with the concise direct narrative are illuminating insights into the role of outside forces on Alaska and the failure of all attempts to make this area self-sufficient within the contemporary economy. [...] This edition is recommended for libraries that do not own the original book, or for those with strong Alaska collections."
– Choice
"[A] work of excellent scholarship. The publication of this new edition necessarily updates the book and will hopefully introduce it to a new audience. It is without question, mandatory reading for those interested in Alaska and Western history."
– Alaska History
"By far the finest history of Alaska yet produced."
– Wallace M. Olson, professor of anthropology, emeritus, University of Alaska
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