Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Additional material
- 1 Introduction: The Problems of Polar History
- 2 ‘I Watch to See How the Land Is Changing’: An Inuit Perspective on Changing Environments and Cultural Resilience in the Western Canadian Arctic
- 3 Evolution of the Antarctic Continent and Its Ice Sheet
- 4 The Initial Peopling of the Circumpolar North
- 5 Archaeology, Politics, and Sámi Heritage
- 6 The Norse Settlement of Greenland
- 7 Russia, the First Arctic Empire, 1000–1917
- 8 The Discovery of Antarctica from Ptolemy to Shackleton
- 9 Sir John Franklin and the Northwest Passage in Myth and Memory
- 10 The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, 1890 to the Present
- 11 Representing the Polar Regions through Historical Fiction
- 12 Geography, Anthropology, and Arctic Knowledge-Making
- 13 Britain’s Polar Empire, 1769–1982
- 14 Canada and the High Arctic Islands, 1880–1950
- 15 The Genesis of the Spitsbergen/Svalbard Treaty, 1871–1920
- 16 Industrial Whaling in the Arctic and Antarctic
- 17 A Historical Archaeology of the First Antarctic Labourers (Nineteenth Century)
- 18 Mining and Colonialism in the Circumpolar North
- 19 Creating the Soviet Arctic, 1917–1991
- 20 Greenland: From Colony to Self-government, 1721–2021
- 21 Cold War Environmental Knowledge in the Polar Regions
- 22 The International Geophysical Year and the Antarctic Treaty System
- 23 The First Century of US Militarization in Alaska, 1867–1967
- 24 Petroleum Development and the State in Arctic North America, 1919–1977
- 25 The Rise of Circumpolar Political Movements
- 26 The History of Polar Environmental Governance
- 27 The Antarctic Extension of Latin America
- 28 Moving Muskoxen as an Arctic Resource in the Twentieth Century
- 29 Boundaries of Place and Time at the Edge of the Polar Oceans
- 30 Re-storying from Within: Renewing Relationships Beyond the Shadows of Polar History
- 31 Conclusion: Time, and the Future of Polar History
- Index
- References
23 - The First Century of US Militarization in Alaska, 1867–1967
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 March 2023
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Additional material
- 1 Introduction: The Problems of Polar History
- 2 ‘I Watch to See How the Land Is Changing’: An Inuit Perspective on Changing Environments and Cultural Resilience in the Western Canadian Arctic
- 3 Evolution of the Antarctic Continent and Its Ice Sheet
- 4 The Initial Peopling of the Circumpolar North
- 5 Archaeology, Politics, and Sámi Heritage
- 6 The Norse Settlement of Greenland
- 7 Russia, the First Arctic Empire, 1000–1917
- 8 The Discovery of Antarctica from Ptolemy to Shackleton
- 9 Sir John Franklin and the Northwest Passage in Myth and Memory
- 10 The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, 1890 to the Present
- 11 Representing the Polar Regions through Historical Fiction
- 12 Geography, Anthropology, and Arctic Knowledge-Making
- 13 Britain’s Polar Empire, 1769–1982
- 14 Canada and the High Arctic Islands, 1880–1950
- 15 The Genesis of the Spitsbergen/Svalbard Treaty, 1871–1920
- 16 Industrial Whaling in the Arctic and Antarctic
- 17 A Historical Archaeology of the First Antarctic Labourers (Nineteenth Century)
- 18 Mining and Colonialism in the Circumpolar North
- 19 Creating the Soviet Arctic, 1917–1991
- 20 Greenland: From Colony to Self-government, 1721–2021
- 21 Cold War Environmental Knowledge in the Polar Regions
- 22 The International Geophysical Year and the Antarctic Treaty System
- 23 The First Century of US Militarization in Alaska, 1867–1967
- 24 Petroleum Development and the State in Arctic North America, 1919–1977
- 25 The Rise of Circumpolar Political Movements
- 26 The History of Polar Environmental Governance
- 27 The Antarctic Extension of Latin America
- 28 Moving Muskoxen as an Arctic Resource in the Twentieth Century
- 29 Boundaries of Place and Time at the Edge of the Polar Oceans
- 30 Re-storying from Within: Renewing Relationships Beyond the Shadows of Polar History
- 31 Conclusion: Time, and the Future of Polar History
- Index
- References
Summary
Within the scholarship on ‘U.S. state and empire building in the longue durée’, Alaska plays a surprisingly small role.3 Past the sizable shelf of studies on World War II, the region also vanishes in the literature on the early years of the global Cold War, despite Alaska’s geopolitical prominence and the corresponding effects of additional defence spending, construction, and employment in the period leading up to statehood in 1959.4 Support for (essentially concurrent) statehood in Alaska and Hawai’i was unquestionably ‘entwined with the buildup of both territories as major Cold War defense installations’.5 To rectify that double oversight, and to draw together periods frequently rendered discrete, this chapter uses the United States (US) military, an institution pivotal to the establishment, expansion, and direction of Alaska as a settler colonial society, to stitch together a century of Alaskan history.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions , pp. 563 - 592Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
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