Prairie Fever

Product Description

From the 1830s onward a succession of well-born Britons headed west to the great American wilderness to find adventure & fulfillment. They brought their dogs sporting guns valets & all the attitudes & prejudices of their class. Prairie Fever explores why the West had such a strong romantic appeal for them at a time when their inherited wealth & passion for sport had no American equivalent. In fascinating & often comic detail the author shows how the British behaved & what the fur traders hunting guides & ordinary Americans made from them as they crossed the country to see the Indians hunt buffalo & eventually build cattle empires buying up vast tracts of the West. But as the British blue bloods became big American landowners they found themselves attacked & reviled as land vultures & accused of attempting a new colonization. The denouement came when Congress moved against the foreigners & passed a law to stop them from buying l&. Peter Pagnamentas wonderful account shows the enthusiasm of the British for new horizons in the age of empire set against the rise of a modern nation that would soon eclipse them.