Paper in response to Nash

The nineteenth-century West, according to Nash, was a resource colony for the industrializing East. Individual enterprise reigned while the federal government sponsored railroads and land distribution, but basically the bonds of colonialism kept the region's development in check. Much recent scholarship challenges this Turnerian vision, particularly on issues of technological innovation, corporate growth, and the federal government's role in many areas of western life.

Indeed, many historians now emphasize how much the western landscape was transformed during the late nineteenth century through a partnership of public and private endeavors -- Indian conquest, topographical surveys, land policy, and government support for extractive activities. There is little doubt that the federal presence in the West became far more instrumental in the twentieth century, but the significant shift was the measure of federal landscaping rather than the nature of it.

Nicolae Kondratieff belonged to a school of economists who looked at history in the context of long wave cycles. During the 1920s Kondratieff suggested that capitalism was cyclical in development, experiencing growth in 40-50 year swings and then a crisis of adjustment. Each wave was developed and fueled by entrepreneurial adaptation of technological innovation. Joseph Schumpeter refined Kondratieff's theories, adding the importance of technology as a cycleforming catalyst. Nash analyises the West's development within these paradigms.

Write a 4-6 page paper in which you argue for or against the usefulness of this text to your understanding of what distinguishes the West as a region.

Cite pages in Nash within ( ). If you use other sources -- cite using Turabian style.