University of Nevada Press Basque Immigrants and Nevada's Sheep Industry: Geopolitics and the Making of an Agricultural Workforce, 1880-1954 (The Basque Series)

Review "In a masterwork of research on immigration issues, immigration law, and Basque identity, Saitua explains nineteenth-century racism against the Basques and their twentieth-century emergence as the preferred ethnic group for herding California and Nevada sheep. . . . as a review of the geopolitics of Basques as a modern labor force in the U.S. West, the book has no equal." --Andrew Guluford, Pacific Historical Review It is clearly the best published study of Basque herders and sheep-owning ranches in any western state. Other scholars interested in tracing Basque experiences in the American West will find this an emulative model for their work. Academics intrigued with the full scope of American ethnic experiences will encounter here the strongest monograph now available on the energetic Basques--in one state. Altogether, a valuable, rewarding study.-- "Journal of American Ethnic History"Out of all these years of research and work in Nevada and other states with an important Basque presence came his book, in which he tells the process the Basque community in that part of the US went through to be as recognized as they are today.-- "About Basque Country" Product Description This book contributes to a wider understanding of the significance of the Basque immigration in the western sheep industry with a historically refreshed perspective. It contributes to the existing new historiography of the American West by looking more critically at the Basque immigrant experience in the open-range sheep industry of Nevada. About the Author Iker Saitua is a Basque Government Postdocroral Fellow in History at the University of California, Riverside and the University of the Basque Country(UPV/EHU). As a native of the Basque Country and a historian of the Basque Country and United States, he specializes in the American West, the history of capitalism and commodities, environmental history, migration and labor history. He lives in Riverside, California. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. On June 20, 1937, the Oregonian published in its Sunday magazine a small photographic report about Basque immigrants in southeastern Oregon. The Basques were widely identified with the western open-range sheep industry, and the article explained how the Basque immigrant community was highly concentrated in both Malheur and Harney counties because their livelihoods depended on the sheep ranching economy in this corner of the Interior West. Moreover, in some places, according to the article, Basque immigrants outnumbered the native-born residents. For instance, the report estimated that in the little frontier town of Jordan Valley, Basque immigrants and their children represented about 66 percent of the total population. The Basque were, according to this article, &;a friendly, hard-working race.&; The article continued: &;In northeastern Spain, from the Bay of Biscay back into the Pyrenees mountains, is the homeland of this unique race. Since prehistoric times this has been their native heath. An intensely proud and independent people, whose origin is cloaked in mystery, theirs is a race apart.1 The words constituted the typically positive view of Basque immigration in the United States as the narrative had developed during previous decades when race classifications abounded. The article praised the Basque immigrants for their alleged industriousness in sheep grazing, warmhearted hospitability, and sense of pride in their origins. It also asserted that Basque immigrants assimilated easily into the dominant American culture. Although Basques were not Anglo-Saxon immigrants, the article said, &;they are masters of English after but few years in this country,&; going on to describe their physical characteristics in ways that were meant to assert affinities with other dominant social and racial groups, and thus indicating how much by the late 1930s the Basques were well on their way to bec