A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth:
The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America
A Talk with Author James Tejani
Please join the Los Angeles City Historical Society for a special webinar with James Tejani, author of “A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America.”
The ports of San Pedro Bay have made Los Angeles into a first-rank world city. The nation’s busiest harbors, they connect economies from across the globe and impact billions of lives each day.
”A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth” searches for the origin of San Pedro Bay’s power and finds it in the major events of nineteenth-century US history, most especially in westward imperial expansion and political conflict including that over slavery. In a narrative that spans decades and stretches to Washington, DC, the Pacific Northwest, Civil War Richmond, Southwest deserts, and even overseas, the book demonstrates how San Pedro came to be seen as all-important to the nation’s future – a safety-valve for its problems, a gateway to commercial wealth, and an object to be controlled and wielded.
The bay’s estuary was not virgin land. Instead, it was home to indigenous people and then a Mexican-era estate. Yet US scientists, including the brilliant George Davidson; expansionist politicians such as Jefferson Davis and John Frémont; and ambitious land speculators, among them the future Union army general Edward Ord and entrepreneur Phineas Banning, would wrest control of the estuary during the 1850s. Decades later, railroad titans Collis Huntington and Edward H. Harriman would capture the bay, hoping to extend their colonial projects into the Pacific. But they were outmatched by US army engineers, by federal regulatory power, and by municipal reformers – all of who would lay the foundations for the Port of Los Angeles, for the modern city of LA, and for the web of global logistics upon which our world depends.
”A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth” tells how the story of San Pedro Bay is that of America – a story emerging earlier, over broader geography, and encompassing more people than previously thought. The result is a historical epic attuned to our times, as beguiling and troubled as the Angel City itself.
The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session.
For purchase links and further information, see jamestejani.com
About the Author
James Tejani is an associate professor in the California State University system. He grew up in Long Beach before studying history at the University of California, San Diego, and Columbia University. His writing has appeared in the Western Historical Quarterly, Southern California Quarterly, Dispatches Magazine, and Los Angeles Times. A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth is his debut book.
LOCATION
Webinar via Zoom
REGISTRATION
This is a free event but registration is required.
This is a free webinar, but we welcome donations if you would like to support our programs. If you are not already a LACHS member, please consider joining LACHS today. Donate and/or become a member online. Your support is very much appreciated!
If you have questions about the event, please email us at lacityhistoryevents@gmail.com.
