tv Globalization in the Pacific Northwest CSPAN November 28, 2015 1:35pm-2:01pm EST
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career. she has endured several scandals, including his impeachment. as she considers a run for the white house, her story is still being written. hillary clinton on c-span's original series, "influence an exploring the public and private life of first ladies. from martha washington to michelle obama. >> coming up next on american history tv, the phd candidate at the university of colorado-boulder, christopher foss talks about his current research on politics and globalization in the pacific northwest. he talks about definition and origin of globalization in the region and how politicians focus their efforts on increasing economic development in the location. we interviewed him at the western history association's annual conference in portland, oregon, in october.
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this is about 20 minutes. susan: chris foss, your work has focused on the pacific northwest from the 1950's to 2000. why did you pick that timeframe? christopher: i think part of it has to do with that being the emergence of the pacific northwest as the region that a lot of people in the u.s. think of it as -- an environmental destination or tourist destination, or a place to go and have fun and to recreate. it has to become these things through a process. the process that i look at as having become that is through this process of globalization. now, we talk about globalization
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as being relatively new. something that starts in the 1980's which is really when this buzzword starts getting thrown around by political scientists and historians. as a way to kind of interpret and understand the world -- the post-cold war world. what really changes is the northwest's traditional reliance on trade is augmented on the one hand. also the rise of a number of really significant political players. so, some of the members of congress that i focus on in my work include senator henry jackson, warren magnuson of washington, congressman tom
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foley, later speak of the house. and in oregon, senator wayne forrester. he was opposed to the vietnam war. senator markey hatfield, as well. these are all figures who i am arguing are, because of their positions in power and in congress, they are channeling their influence and their power back to make the pacific northwest an even bigger player on the global stage, starting with world war ii and really continuing on. susan: you mentioned the state of washington and oregon. when you look at the pacific northwest, is a primarily those two states, or -- christopher: yes. the definition of the pacific
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northwest is one of these things that is very arguable. it is a great argument to have. a historian in his textbook about the pacific northwest which go to high school students all over -- he mainly focuses on washington, oregon, and idaho. william robbins, a distinguished historian from oregon, recently co-authored a book looking at the region more broadly and including montana and british columbia. and, i think why i center on washington is because these are the states that are always in every definition of the pacific northwest. they are never left out. sometimes alaska is left out and is up there on its own. but these are states that are contiguous with the u.s., right on the pacific ocean and they are the closest u.s. states to japan and china. so, these are big -- susan: before we talk more about that period after the second world war, up to 2000, can you talk a little bit about the economies of oregon and washington leading up to 1950 and what the primary industries were and how much trade was
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going on before that? christopher: absolutely. the primary industries are mainly extracted in nature. they are very agricultural. so, timber in western oregon and western washington. but also on the east side of the state to some degree is a huge resource, domestically. what is mostly traded abroad, prior to 1950, is wheat. from eastern oregon and eastern washington. the variety of other -- apples. washington is known as one of the biggest exporters of apples. strawberries. huckleberries. other kind of goods that require farmworkers and farmhands. these primarily are -- these are
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industries that are very agricultural in nature. so, what then we see after 1950's diversification of the economy. you see in the timber industry, japan, post-war emerges as one of the biggest exporters of pacific northwest logs. that most starts to change the economy of the region because the region's politicians and business leaders start to realize, we might actually need to diversify things a little bit because the timber industry is declining. there is a lot of sales of logs internally and also externally to the japanese. so, you have players like boeing in western washington. they just completed a big sale
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with china. this has been ongoing for the last four years. that becomes a big thing. in the 1980's, you have nintendo of america. the headquarters were in redmond, washington. you have the rise of silicon forest. in the suburbs of portland. intel has a big base out there. nike becomes a big global player. these are much more, kind of -- more modern industries that we think of as opposed to the farming, more agricultural industries which were dominant in the early -- earlier, before the 1950's. susan: i hope that we could look at a few politicians who might be familiar to c-span viewers because they have long careers in washington, tom foley, a democrat from washington, and mark hatfield, a republican from oregon.
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let's start with mark hatfield. maybe in talking about him, you can explain how they worked -- how they worked to pass laws or grow and diversify the economy? christopher: i think what we are talking about mark hatfield, a good place to start with him is when he becomes governor before he becomes senator, he is governor of oregon from 1959-1967. when he takes office, there's a moment where the timber industry, ever so precipitously, is starting to decline in oregon. you see this in papers of his associates. you see that there is this greater realization by mark hatfield and his staff that we have to shake up the economy of oregon. we have to attract industry from out-of-state.
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we have to attract more foreign trade partners, as well. so, as far as i can tell, mark hatfield is really the first governor from oregon to engage in international trade missions. either going to or receiving japanese delegations during his time in office. he starts -- he is the main impetus behind the organization of something called the oregon graduate institute, which is designed to be a kind of counter-weight to boeing -- in seattle. trying to draw people in to learn trade skills which would lead to jobs that would better integrate oregon with globalizing the industrial economy. mark hatfield continues to work for ventures like these even as he becomes senator. from 1957-1997. susan: when he got to congress, was there work that he did as a
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member of the committee to initiate changes in u.s. policy that made it better environment for globalization? christopher: certainly. on the one hand, mark hatfield is very involved with liberalizing immigration. now, in this, he is not saying, i want to bring millions of new americans to our shores. what his focus is on, is on refugee relief, helping, for example, southeast asians after the vietnam war. in doing so, i think it is more implicit than next explicit, but in doing so, he is helping to diversify the region and make it more attractive to a wider array of cultures.
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a wider variety of people to come, not just to oregon, but to the pacific northwest, in general. boeing has already been doing this to a much more overt extent in trying to attract people from outside of the u.s. who are talented scientists and engineers to work there. mark hatfield does this, as well, for oregon. i think without even thinking about it, in talks with his staffers, what they have emphasized is that mark hatfield was acting out of a sense of duty. a sense of morality. not just religious morality, faith was a big part of his dna -- of his makeup. so, a lot of that plays a role into why he helps to bring in so many refugees. what that does is it does help the state and the region grow economically. in a way that we would not think
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of so much if we were just reading off the text. the other things that mark hatfield does to build the local economy and in an international way is to reconceptualize what we think about when we think about national defense. mark hatfield was a long opponent of the vietnam war, he says, a better way to defend the nation is not to launch unnecessary wars, it is to build the nation through education. he said that education brings national security. as chair of the appropriations committee, hoping to bring in money that fueled education, particularly, at oregon health and sciences university in portland, not only does education bring national security but he strongly believes that health did so, as well. he fostered the building of the va hospital appear in portland's west hills in the 1970's. millions and millions of dollars
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in appropriations to make ohsu the world-class institute that it is today. it is these kinds of softer rounds of foreign policy, not the diplomacy or the military that mark hatfield is having a role in internationalizing the northwest. susan: tom foley, from washington. can you talk about his career and, again, what he was doing during his career to promote this kind of globalization and diversity? christopher: tom foley is very involved on a number of fronts. a little bit about his background, he is born in spokane and raised in eastern washington. from an early period, he goes to the university of washington to do graduate studies in the early 1950's.
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he is in the soviet studies program at one point. very early on, he becomes an international. he becomes very interested in what is going on outside of his home state. another really formative moment for him and this is much later on. he becomes congressman from the fifth district in eastern washington in 1965. he is assigned to the house agriculture committee, which is a really big assignment for eastern washington congressman, because he can directly affect the lives of his constituents. one of the things that happens to him is that he is in a meeting of the agriculture committee, i think in about 1967 or so -- a delegation from japan comes to the meeting and they come to thank the house agriculture committee for some work that they had done for them. they are actually treated very rudely by the house agriculture
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chairman who keeps trying to get them to leave and there is a cultural misunderstanding. they do not really understand -- their english is not very good. so, they are just paraded and pushed off of the house floor. tom foley sees what is going on and he goes over to the delegation and he says, what can we do to help make this right? he actually ends up inviting them all over to dinner in his apartment that evening. and, they have food and drinks. it starts this relationship with japan for tom foley that ends up being a very personal relationship for him. but also works out really well for the northwest because already at this point, japan is a major buyer of northwest wheat, both in oregon and washington.
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tom foley is always a big proponent of helping private enterprise in washington to do sales to private enterprise in japan. or, also, hoping to get northwest businessman to sell wheat products through a public law, the food for peace program, the foreign aid program. he does this with japan and he also does this with china and the soviet union. really greasing the wheels for a lot of things. susan: when you look at oregon and washington today, based on your research of this past five decades or so -- what do you see today that is a direct result of what was happening? christopher: the region, today, is a lot more global in a basic word than it was even 20-25 years ago. i can remember as a kid the institutions and the businesses and the schools. it felt very parochial and
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provincial. not that that was necessarily a wholly bad thing, i think that the northwest had a somewhat more distinct -- it was much more distinct. i think the region is much more cosmopolitan now because you have so many new voices from the outside. so many new businesses. you have nintendo of america here. you have a lot of japanese companies in the silicon forest, just outside of portland. so, and you have the container ships coming in to seattle and until recently, to portland, as well, bringing in millions and billions of dollars of new goods, annually, to the region and traveling through the region.
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what you see, i think, is a closer connection and a closer realization on the part of northwesterners that they are not alone in the world. but there is a lot to be learned from the world outside of it and there is a lot to be gained from the world outside of it. this is not a unique realization. this is happening all over the u.s. i think northwesterners have a distinct impression of themselves as being somehow different from other parts of the nation. somehow, more tucked away and in their own little corner of the u.s. now, with the opening of trade with the pacific rim, growth of immigration, you start to see the northwest as an integral part of this growth. but, it is one out of a lot of different pieces of -- susan: how have you gone about your research on the subject? christopher: i started by reading a lot.
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there are a lot of different books on various defense and trade and immigration of related subjects. a lot of backing in terms of the pacific northwest, but also in terms of how the federal government works, itself, because early on, i identified the political culture of the northwest that is, to me, the most unique and distinct feature about this region. you have politicians here who have a perception, i think, by people of the northwest, of being very honest and very good at their jobs. of bringing, really, good amounts of money and projects to the region. jobs, federal dollars. in doing so, i think with a minimum of corruption that you see in other places in the
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country -- just being genuine people, being genuine politicians, being really, really -- you can go out and relate to someone in rural enterprise oregon just as much as you can relate to the city slicker in spokane. that sort of thing. that is what draws me to the politicians. i went to the paper depositories of jackson and magnuson in washington and tom foley's papers in pullman, washington. also senator wayne morse, another major figure in this era of transformation from the northwest. his papers at the university of oregon. i have also spoken to a lot of staffers who worked for senator mark hatfield, having been the most recent of the individuals. there are still a lot of his staffers that are active and engaged on matters of foreign
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policy. so, it is a lot to bring together. i think that the picture that has emerged has kind of -- has deepened my understanding, but it also has backed up a lot of -- those of us who live in the northwest -- our understanding of these individuals as truly dedicated to the public good, in a way that i think is unique in terms of talking about a region as a whole, in terms of politicians. susan: christopher foss, thank you for stopping by to talk to us. christopher: thank you so much, it has been a pleasure. >> you're watching american history tv. >> on the eve of the american williamsburg was a
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bustling population. american history tv will return to williamsburg on november december 5. --we will hear about colonial aave owners, learn from master blacksmith, and go behind the scenes of the costume center. viewers can ask questions of throughout curators the day. decemberaturday, fifth, beginning at 11:00 eastern here on american history tv on c-span 3. >> all persons have a business before the honorable supreme court of the united states are punished to john near and give their attention. >> coming up on c-span's ."andmark cases's
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demanded to see the paper, which they refused to do, so she grabbed it out of his hands to look at it, and then a scuffle started. she put this piece of paper into her bosom. , the policeadily officer put his hands into -- into her bosom, and thereafter handcuffed her, while the police officers started to search the house. >> in 1957, cleveland police 'snt to dorothy mapp home, and demanded entry. she refused access without it wore it. later, returning with what they claimed was a war, they searched
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the home. she was arrested and sentenced to seven years for contraband. she sued, and her case made and all the supreme court. we both explore the case of mapp versus ohio, and how this and other cases transformed police practices nationwide. on "landmarkg up cases" on monday, at 9:00 eastern. for background on the case, order your copy of "landmark available fork, $8.95 on c-span.org. >> up next on american history tv, thomas tutor, president of the society of the honor guard, talks about the history of arlington national cemetery and unknown.of the ow
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he describes how general became part of the cemetery. denver and eclectic coast at this event. it is a little over 90 minutes. [applause] >> first of all, thank you for the invitation and thank you, jessica jones were doing the -- for doing the legwork and getting this organized and put together. we have guys in their 90's, guys in active duty, and females in our society who have guarded the tomb because the tomb was guarded first in 1995 by corporal heather johnson, the first female to walk them at in 1995.
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