A Study Of The Family History Of Immigrants In The American West

Fundamental changes have taken place in the Western world since the disintegration of the Soviet Union,particularly the United States believes that it has won the "Cold War" and can dominate the world since then.However,in less than 30 years,socialist China has made great strides in the world.Instead,the United States has fallen into political divergence and economic chaos.During the period of Trump's administration,American problems became increasingly prominent.The author was engaged in fieldwork in the United States during the two years of Trump's four-year reign.I have personally experienced the decline of American democracy.The American economy,driven by land development,is coming to an end,and the contradictions of racism in American society are unprecedentedly acute.Therefore,we will find the historical opportunities and driving force of the prosperity and development of the United States in the research of the western frontier development of the United States at this moment.After almost 200 years of development in the United States,the resources of territory to expand and the immigration momentum are fading away,which eventually lead to the loss of the support of Western democracy in which individualism and profit is the core of the mode of production.Their historical experiences and institutional issues offer important referential significance for the choice of systems by countries in the world,and provide powerful foreign experiences for China's reform and opening up and economic development in the new era.During my visit to the East Asian Institute of the University of Oregon,I was fortunate to collect the archives,diaries and letters of Richard Charles Litchfield's family.In the interviews with the descendants of Litchfield's family of Eugene,who still lives at the University of Oregon today,I found that this family history is a typical record of three major historical processes from stepping on this new land to American independence,from the Westward Movement to the World War,from the rise of the the post-war America to the present day.The three ancestors of Richard Litchfield set foot on this continent for different reasons,and later immigrated to Oregon during the American settlement westward.The true history is the life history of innumerable individuals,and the historical necessity gradually rises in the concrete actions of all the people.The significance of oral history is observing this huge historical feast from the perspective of personal life histories.The individual contradictions in each era reflect the historical times,and the uniqueness of Litchfield's family history lies in the fact that they consciously reserve and pass down the individual experiences of major family members in each era.Through interviews,collections,and records of these individual experiences,we show Chinese readers the life of this immigrant family in the United States before and after the immigration to the west until today:The young man living in the American Independence War expressed his aversion to the old world and yearning for the new world,while his descendants standing at another starting point,regard the world built by their parents as the object of resistance.This process will repeat itself ad infinitum.The first chapter mainly introduces my field objects.Through the understanding of Eugene,Oregon,we can understand Richard Litchfield himself and his story more accurately,and understand the typical significance and special position of this family in the immigration history of the western United States.The second chapter mainly follows the historical sequence,recording and discussing the ancestors of the first Litchfield who immigrated to the United States,and put forward what influences of their original economic foundation and cultural characteristics were on them before coming to the United States.The third chapter mainly shows the historical details of the whites' colonization and looting of Indian land after the Litchfield family immigrated to the United States.These field materials reproduce the relationship between the land issue and race issue in the initial stage of the establishment of the American social system.Chapter 4 shows the specific activities that the Litchfield family experienced during the American Revolution.The significance of this history is that after the American War of Independence,the Litchfield ancestors decided to "go west".Chapters 5 and 6 record the specific process of the Litchfield's family emigrating to the west,and record how the descendants of the parties perceive the process of their parents' hard work,gradually acquiring land and winning social status.The seventh chapter is to deeply study the meanings of Litchfield's family history after the field investigation and literature review above,and this is mainly done by interviewing Richard Litchfield.After two consecutive years of interviews with Richard Litchfield and three consecutive years of collecting and sorting out his family documents,I completed fieldwork and literature research.From this family history we can see that every member is both a participant and an awed audience.If the experiences of childhood and adolescence are rooted in the social and historical environment in which they live,then the contradictions of adolescence in each generation are similar and different.The historical movements are the collective creation of each generation.For immigrant countries that have lost their land,rituals,and traditional origins,tracing back the family history has the meaning of cultural identity.After 1840,the immigrants who lived in eastern and central parts of America moved to Oregon successively.They rode horses and carts primitively,and then came by train and boat.There were a lot of stories happened during this time,including the stories of ancestors of Litchfield,which were parts of the westward movement of America.Oregon was the western frontier of the United States at that time,which combines of the foreign civilization and indigenous culture as the characteristics of the frontier.The westward movement is also the process of Americans truly come into being.In the plunder of the fertile land,an American-style democratic society was born.My main perspective to observe the history of the development of the western frontier of the United States is "the land".From injustice of acquiring lands from the Indians to the justice of seizing lands from the British for independence;ranging from the war for lands to the land speculation and annexation.Actually,the history of the United States is the history of the development of land.Land means opportunities as well as the transfer of problems.When frontier closed,the land expanding was over,and domestic problems could no longer be transferred to a new territory.Trump's election as president reflects the unprecedented divergences in America between the Democrats and the Republicans,along with the outbreak of domestic religious conflicts,immigration conflicts,the gap between the rich and the poor,and gender conflicts,but the root of the problem lies in the land.The land in America is different from the old continent for it has been a commodity in the first place,not "state-owned" or "collectively owned." Wherever American immigrants develop the land,there is the border of the United States.Every immigrant who came to America started with land sale,there was no stage when the people in the Old World connected land with nations,land,and culture.As a result,the crux of the land issue in America is deeply hidden in the capitalist system.The capitalist spirit contained in Protestantism has formed the American land values and entrepreneurial culture.It is believed that the true unique value of land is to be a commodity that can be bought and sold and bring benefits to human.So the land became the target of speculation.The reason why the accumulation of weal this feasible,of course,is because they have a fertile continent.However,with end of the western frontier pioneering era,there is no more free land in the west.The endless pursuit of free land has led to capital and territorial expansion,and the endless pursuit of a free economy has caused more and more serious economic crises.