A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth
It's not really about a machine
As the eyes of the world are focused on the destruction in Southern California, many are discussing how the geography-defying colossus that is L.A. came to be.
They should probably ask James Tejani.
His eerily timely book A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles — And America offers a unique historical angle on how the City of the Angels became an urban and commercial center for a transpacific empire. Spoiler alert: it was partly thanks to its massive port complex.
Despite the title, the book is about people.
It is about the people who mapped the Pacific coastline, who played hardball politics over slavery and who executed massive land grabs to transform California from an an agricultural hinterland to an industrial powerhouse.
Tejani skillfully depicts the early and enduring rush to make money on California's prized coastal real estate. To be successful, clever Army officers, powerful politicians and shrewd speculators had to wrest those lands from the control of the descendants of Spanish-Mexican settlers.
Even so, some Californios, such as L.A.'s DomÃnguez family, succeeded in holding onto many of their lands and parlaying them into wealth and status during the post-Gold Rush era.
Before reading the book, I was unaware of just how central the struggles over slavery were to mapping the route of the Transcontinental Railroad. Tejani masterfully portrays key legislators and officials maneuvering to force the tracks to pass through territories allied with their states’ positions on slavery.
As the Civil War became inevitable, the state's role as a supplier of goods and raw materials anchored its role in the U.S. economy, thanks to the development of Southern California.
Decades later, California's position became even more strategic as the Spanish-American War transformed the U.S. from a transcontinental to a trans-Pacific empire.
I strongly recommend the book and my two-part interview with its author and fellow CSU professor, Dr. James Tejani.