California was named after Queen Calafia, the ruler of a mythical island of black Amazons in a 1510 Spanish romance novel. In 1533, Spanish explorers sailing from Mexico landed in what they believed was an island but was actually a peninsula, naming it California. Native Americans had lived in the region for centuries before European contact. During World War II, over 100,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from California and incarcerated due to racism and fears of sabotage. California's population and economy boomed in the postwar years due to developments in industries like aviation, electronics, and biotechnology that were pioneered in the state. Today California leads the nation in biotech research and manufacturing.
2. CH 1. Queen Calafia’s Island (Place and First People) In 1510 the Spanish writer Garci Ordonez de Montalvo issued a sequel to his 1508 prose romance Amadis de Gaula. Among Esplandian’s allies at the siege were the California’s a race of black Amazons under command of Queen Calafia. Queen Calafia was a very large, and most beautiful. Her thoughts desirous of achieving great things, strong limb, and courage. Calafia had sailed to Constantinople to join the other great captains of the world in the siege against the Turks. By the end Queen Calafia and the California's have become Christians. Calafia marries one of Esplandian’s lieutenants and goes on further adventures.
3. In 1533 a party of Spanish explores, sailing West from Mexico across an unnamed sea at the command of Hernan Cortes conquer of Mexico, landed on what they believed to be an island in the recent discovered Pacific. After, 1539 they began to call the place after the mythic island of California. Not until 1539-40 the Spanish discover their geographical mistake. California was a peninsula not an island, and North of the peninsula eventually called Antigua or Old California was a vast northern region that the Spaniards would be unable to settle for another 230 years.
4. Native Americans European contact in 1492 something approaching one third of all Native Americans living within the present day boundaries of the continental United States . Fore centuries hundreds of thousands of Native American had been making their homes, living their lives now called California. With many languages, tribes and tribelets and so many autonomous communities. Native American California offered a paradigm of linguistic and cultural diversity anticipating the population patterns of a later era.
5. Ch.9- War and Peace(Garrison State and Suburban Growth) Seized as an act of War in 1846, governed by the military until 1850, California remained closely connected to the military through the rest of the nineteenth century. The Second World War formally began on September 1, 1939, when German invaded Poland. In the Pacific could be seen to have begun earlier with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. The attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941 took all force from the American First movement
6. Japanese Immigrants The White California movement was gaining strength and in 1913 the legislature passed the Alien Land Act prohibiting Japanese immigrants from owning land in the state. President Woodrow Wilson sent Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan to Sacramento to plead the case against passing this bill. Governor Hiram Johnson rallied the anti Japanese lobby and the bill came a law. In April 1919 as Japan sat with the other victorious allies at Versailles. The Immigration Act of 1924 prohibited the Japanese from immigrating to the U.S.
7. Lieutenant General John L. De Witt head of the Western Defense Command. On March 1, 1942 Dewitt issued Proclamation Number One designating the western half of California, Oregon, and Washington and the southern third of Arizona as military zones from which all Japanese were to be removed. During World War II California witnessed the triumphs of industrial culture and deep barriers of race, class, and gender. Between 1940 and 1950 the state population grew from 6.9 million to 10.6 million. Between July 1945 and July 1947 more than a million people migrated to California creating shortages. Such massive development demanded anchorage in the time, place, and theme. Disneyland helped to do this.
8. Ch.10- O Brave New World(Seeking Utopia Through Science and Technology) California invented it self as an American place. The completion of the trans-Sierra portion of the transcontinental railroad can be seen as an engineering feat of the highest order. The development of mining technology lead to the Pelton turbine, a California invention which in turn brought hydroelectricity to California, which in turn made possible an industrial infrastructure. Aviation had been preoccupation since the 1800’s and when the airplane arrives in California it was adopted and perfected there. By the 1920’s California had taken the lead in vacuum tube technology making it possible for television and radio
9. 1930’s were taking the lead in smashing the atom. 1950’s were bringing into being through the semiconductor, the digital revolution. Then came biotechnology which lead the nation. From its opening in 1869 the University of California was interested in mining, geology, agriculture, and mechanical engineering because these enterprises were crucial to the developing economy state.
10. Biotechnology Biological Basis of life itself was also being probed and manipulated sometimes controversially through the new DNA based science of genetics and the biotechnology that could manipulate the digital code of life. 42% of all biotechnological research and manufacturing in the U.S was located in California. Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oak and Ventura County could be found the largest biotech company in the world, the sales reaching $3 million annually by the year 2000. Most biotech companies were working on medically related initiatives a cure for cancer, AIDS, strokes, heart attacks, and gene therapy etc. UC San Diego has been the Stanford of biotechnology.