California's wine country conjures images of pastoral vineyards and cellars lined with oak barrels. As a mainstay of the state's economy, California wines occupy the popular imagination like never before and drive tourism in famous viticultural regions across the state. Scholars know remarkably little, however, about the history of the wine industry and the diverse groups who built it. In fact, contemporary stereotypes belie how the state's commercial wine industry was born amid social turmoil and racialized violence in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century California.
In The Grapes of Conquest Julia Ornelas-Higdon addresses these gaps in the historical narrative and popular imagination. Beginning with the industry's inception at the California missions, Ornelas-Higdon examines the evolution of wine growing across three distinct political regimes-Spanish, Mexican, and American-through the industry's demise after Prohibition. This interethnic study of race and labor in California examines how California Natives, Mexican Californios, Chinese immigrants, and Euro-Americans came together to build the industry. Ornelas-Higdon identifies the birth of the wine industry as a significant missing piece of California history-one that reshapes scholars' understandings of how conquest played out, how race and citizenship were constructed, and how agribusiness emerged across the region. The Grapes of Conquest unearths the working-class, multiracial roots of the California wine industry, challenging its contemporary identity as the purview of elite populations.
By:
Julia Ornelas-Higdon
Imprint: University of Nebraska Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781496239518
ISBN 10: 1496239512
Series: At Table
Pages: 292
Publication Date: 01 November 2023
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Vineyard Roots 1. Cultivating Alta California’s First Vineyards, 1769–1820 2. Wine Growing in Mexican California, 1821–1845 3. American Wine Making and Notions of Modernity, 1850–1870 4. Agricultural Citizenship and the Anaheim Wine Colony, 1854–1890 5. Immigration, Whiteness, and the Chinese Question in California’s Vineyards, 1860–1900 6. Wine for Wealth, Health, and Temperance, 1870–1920 Epilogue: Mythologies, Narratives, and Representations of California Wine Notes Bibliography Index
Julia Ornelas-Higdon is an associate professor of history at California State University, Channel Islands.
Reviews for The Grapes of Conquest: Race, Labor, and the Industrialization of California Wine, 1769–1920
"""Julia Ornelas-Higdon's important and absorbing study places California's celebrated wine industry at the center of processes of conquest and settler colonialism, and the construction of race and class hierarchies over the long nineteenth century. Viticulture, as she so adeptly demonstrates, defined race, citizenship, and belonging in Spanish, Mexican, and American California.""--Jessica Kim, associate professor of history at California State University, Northridge ""The Grapes of Conquest examines how wine producers used racialized discourses to erase California viticulture's Indigenous, Spanish, and Californio roots, while uplifting white agricultural citizenship and defining wine as a civilizing agent. It recuperates the multilayered ethnic history of grape production and labor while illustrating the racialized complexities involved in creating space, identities, and citizenship during the long nineteenth century.""--Yvette J. Saavedra, assistant professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Oregon"
