Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1994. [Vol. 2.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 22)

BOOK REVIEWS - Davis D. Joyce: D. W. Meinig: The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History. Volume 2: Continental America, 1800—1867. Yale University Press, 1993. 636 pp

momentous geographical changes taking place within this expanding structure during these years. Meinig proceeds to cover in that part such familiar topics as the Louisiana Purchase, Indian removal, Oregon, and Texas and the Mexican War, but always with a fresh perspective. On the War of 1812, for example, he chooses to emphasize the Canadian viewpoint How many Americans are aware that the famous British invasion of Washington, D. C., was in direct retaliation for the American looting and burning of York a short time before? And if the Americans were able to rationalize a victory in that war, certainly the Canadians could more readily proclaim victory: "They could also breathe a great sigh of relief that they had not been conquered and forcibly incorporated into the body of their aggressive, volatile, republican neighbor." Indian removal, says Meinig, involved a "decision to establish an Indian America and a White America;" it was "a kind of geographical social engineering." Meinig quotes traditional historian of American expansion Frederick Merk about the Oregon settlement at the Forty-ninth parallel as "the boundary that the finger of nature and the finger of history pointed out," then continues skeptically: "As for the first, it is difficult for a geographer to discern 'the finger of nature' ... in a geometric line drawn straight across great mountains and rivers and across the human systems adapted to those gross lineaments of nature. As for 'the finger of history,' it is true that the United States kept its 'finger' pointed firmly along the Forty-ninth parallel, but it must also be concluded that it thereby achieved a geopolitical victory that its historical geographical position could hardly justify. ..." "Manifest Destiny," it would seem, the phrase used by Americans of that generation to justify their expansion, was neither "manifest" nor "destined"! Meinig is perhaps at his best in discussing Texas and the Mexican War; two of his earlier books were Southwest: Three Peoples in Geographical Change, 1600—1970 and Imperial Texas: An Interpretive Essay in Cultural Geography. Here he writes: 176