Seattle from the Margins: Exclusion, Erasure, and the Making of a Pacific Coast City
The creation of Seattle and the displacement of those who built it

From the origins of the city in the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of World War II, Seattle's urban workforce consisted overwhelmingly of migrant laborers who powered the seasonal, extractive economy of the Pacific Northwest. Though the city benefitted from this mobile labor force—consisting largely of Indigenous peoples and Asian migrants—municipal authorities, elites, and reformers continually depicted these workers and the spaces they inhabited as troublesome and as impediments to urban progress. Today the physical landscape bears little evidence of their historical presence in the city.

Tracing histories from unheralded sites such as labor camps, lumber towns, lodging houses, and so-called slums, Seattle from the Margins shows how migrant laborers worked alongside each other, competed over jobs, and forged unexpected alliances within the marine and coastal spaces of the Puget Sound. By uncovering the historical presence of marginalized groups and asserting their significance in the development of the city, Megan Asaka offers a deeper understanding of Seattle's complex past.

Seattle from the Margins was made possible in part by a grant from 4Culture’s Heritage Program.

1140544140
Seattle from the Margins: Exclusion, Erasure, and the Making of a Pacific Coast City
The creation of Seattle and the displacement of those who built it

From the origins of the city in the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of World War II, Seattle's urban workforce consisted overwhelmingly of migrant laborers who powered the seasonal, extractive economy of the Pacific Northwest. Though the city benefitted from this mobile labor force—consisting largely of Indigenous peoples and Asian migrants—municipal authorities, elites, and reformers continually depicted these workers and the spaces they inhabited as troublesome and as impediments to urban progress. Today the physical landscape bears little evidence of their historical presence in the city.

Tracing histories from unheralded sites such as labor camps, lumber towns, lodging houses, and so-called slums, Seattle from the Margins shows how migrant laborers worked alongside each other, competed over jobs, and forged unexpected alliances within the marine and coastal spaces of the Puget Sound. By uncovering the historical presence of marginalized groups and asserting their significance in the development of the city, Megan Asaka offers a deeper understanding of Seattle's complex past.

Seattle from the Margins was made possible in part by a grant from 4Culture’s Heritage Program.

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Seattle from the Margins: Exclusion, Erasure, and the Making of a Pacific Coast City

Seattle from the Margins: Exclusion, Erasure, and the Making of a Pacific Coast City

by Megan Asaka
Seattle from the Margins: Exclusion, Erasure, and the Making of a Pacific Coast City

Seattle from the Margins: Exclusion, Erasure, and the Making of a Pacific Coast City

by Megan Asaka

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Overview

The creation of Seattle and the displacement of those who built it

From the origins of the city in the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of World War II, Seattle's urban workforce consisted overwhelmingly of migrant laborers who powered the seasonal, extractive economy of the Pacific Northwest. Though the city benefitted from this mobile labor force—consisting largely of Indigenous peoples and Asian migrants—municipal authorities, elites, and reformers continually depicted these workers and the spaces they inhabited as troublesome and as impediments to urban progress. Today the physical landscape bears little evidence of their historical presence in the city.

Tracing histories from unheralded sites such as labor camps, lumber towns, lodging houses, and so-called slums, Seattle from the Margins shows how migrant laborers worked alongside each other, competed over jobs, and forged unexpected alliances within the marine and coastal spaces of the Puget Sound. By uncovering the historical presence of marginalized groups and asserting their significance in the development of the city, Megan Asaka offers a deeper understanding of Seattle's complex past.

Seattle from the Margins was made possible in part by a grant from 4Culture’s Heritage Program.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780295751863
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Publication date: 12/13/2022
Series: Emil and Kathleen Sick Book Series in Western History and Biography
Pages: 272
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Megan Asaka is assistant professor of history at the University of California, Riverside.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction. Seattle Unsettled 1

Chapter 1 The Sawdust 17

Chapter 2 Urban Roots of Puget Sound Agriculture 44

Chapter 3 Race, Radicals, and Timber 77

Chapter 4 Japanese Hotels and Housing Reform 110

Chapter 5 Labor, Intimacy, and the Depression 136

Chapter 6 Demolition on the Eve of War 159

Conclusion. Displacement and Exclusion, Past and Present 187

Notes 191

Bibliography 227

Index 247

What People are Saying About This

Shelley Lee

"A rare comparative and relational history of race and migration in the Puget Sound area. Its rigorous examination of Native, Chinese, and Japanese experiences and their relationship to a larger history of racial contestation and displacement is truly significant."

Nayan Shah

"Imaginatively reveals Seattle’s vibrant multi-racial creators—the Indigenous people and Asian migrants—who toiled and struggled in the city’s first century and whose forgotten intimacies and legacies expose the sediments of racial segregation.”"

Coll Thrush

"Seattle has always been a working city, and Megan Asaka's compelling account of labor, race, and migration in and around the Northwest's largest city gives us new ways of seeing and understanding this fact. Caught up in imperial networks, systems of segregation, and the logics of racial capitalism, the workers of Seattle both transformed and were transformed by their encounters with the city and surrounding spaces. A must-read for anyone interested in the region's history or in the intersections between labor and race more generally."

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