Race And Homicide In Nineteenth-Century California (Shepperson Series in History Humanities)

High murder rates have always been considered an indication of a society in turmoil, and nineteenth-century California was no exception. A rapidly growing population, booming mining camps, insufficient or nonexistent law-enforcement personnel, and many ethnic groups with differing attitudes toward law and personal honor created a situation in which violence was common and legal responses varied broadly.McKanna presents here a vivid, carefully detailed portrait of a society in flux, where ancient Spanish and Chinese legal practices collided with English common law and the "Code of the West, " where greed, poverty, and down-right meanness created tensions that frequently led to bloodshed. The text, enhanced with testimony from contemporary sources and illustrated with period photographs, is an engaging and richly intelligent study of a frontier society where the law was neither omnipresent nor, frequently, impartial.Clare V. McKanna is the author of 'Race And Homicide In Nineteenth-Century California (Shepperson Series in History Humanities)', published 2002 under ISBN 9780874175158 and ISBN 0874175151.