What comes to mind when you think of conflict in the West? Is it a gunfight at the OK Corral? Certainly western films have emphasized the idea that violence and conflicts were resolved hand to hand-or gunslinger to sheriff. But explaining the bloody conflicts in the West only in terms of personal violence is perhaps too appealing. It lets us off the hook because it allows us to escape asking uncomfortable questions about social conflict.

What of the century's cross-cultural kidnappings in the Southwest? What about the early twentieth century anti-union violence in the coalfields? And, what of the anti-immigrant sentiment of today?

We do not live in a society of peace. Look at the conflicts between present-day environmentalists and developers. Think of the battles fought by nineteenth century suffragists and political reformers; the struggles over land between settlers, government, military and Native Americans; land-use claims made by descendents of Hispano settlers vs. newcomers. Water use, and struggles over grazing rights... Violence and conflict existed and were often reflected in the social order of the West. Many of these conflicts played out on a national stage, and most were not personal battles...

Our society has by and large imposed law and order. But if, in the past, the social order itself sometimes encouraged violence, then our easy understanding of western history as the imposition of peace and the rule of law upon a lawless and violent land loses its meaning-and history becomes, yet again, more complicated.

The West is based in large part on an extractive economy. That economy depends upon "natural" products-cattle, wheat, gold, lumber, silver, and copper. It is easy to think of the evolution of the economy as natural and inevitable. It was neither. It was the result of conscious economic choices, and as it grew, it eliminated earlier ways of organizing economic life, such as trade or cooperative farming.

In the West, American Indians, Asians, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans were the groups often defeated or subordinated during the nineteenth century. As such, many of these westerners were familiar with the sensation of powerlessness. Richard White writes that powerlessness was, however, unfamiliar and surprising to westerners who belonged to groups that had come into the West as conquerors. Anglo American farmers and ranchers of the rural West and the immigrant workers of western cities and towns all thought that the conquest of the West had assured them a future in rising prosperity and increasing control over their lives. They had conquered the West and seemingly shaped the land to their will, yet these people, too, found themselves losing their ability to shape events.

The eroding power of the rural West has proved particularly bitter because it has most affected those people who seemed to exemplify the ostensible values of the West: individualism, self-reliance, and independence. Those rural westerners who maintained access to power and influence were those who abandoned the older values, those who instead of resisting the rise of large corporations and the new bureaucracies cooperated with them and tapped into the power of the cities and the large organizations. They prospered while those who battled the new centers of power saw their fortunes decline.

If the federal government is the largest landholder in the West, what role have federal agencies played in the development of the economy? What impact has that had on the shape of the West we know today?

The War Years
Arguably, the largest single conflict the United States has been involved in to date was World War II. The war's impact on the West-the development of the land, the economy, population centers and growth patterns cannot be overestimated.