ABOUT THIS BOOK
State capitals are an indelible part of the American psyche, spatial representations of state power and national identity. Learning them by heart is a rite of passage in grade school, a pedagogical exercise that emphasizes the importance of committing place-names to memory. But geographers have yet to analyze state capitals in any depth. In American Capitals, Christian Montès takes us on a well-researched journey across America—from Augusta to Sacramento, Albany to Baton Rouge—shedding light along the way on the historical circumstances that led to their appointment, their success or failure, and their evolution over time.
While all state capitals have a number of characteristics in common—as symbols of the state, as embodiments of political power and decision making, as public spaces with private interests—Montès does not interpret them through a single lens, in large part because of the differences in their spatial and historical evolutionary patterns. Some have remained small, while others have evolved into bustling metropolises, and Montès explores the dynamics of change and growth. All but eleven state capitals were established in the nineteenth century, thirty-five before 1861, but, rather astonishingly, only eight of the fifty states have maintained their original capitals. Despite their revered status as the most monumental and historical cities in America, capitals come from surprisingly humble beginnings, often plagued by instability, conflict, hostility, and corruption. Montès reminds us of the period in which they came about, “an era of pioneer and idealized territorial vision,” coupled with a still-evolving American citizenry and democracy.
REVIEWS
“Christian Montès turns the location and naming of American state capitals—typically the subject of classic geographic trivia memorization—into a searching and fascinating examination of how federalism has affected the urban geography of the United States. The book proceeds from some general themes about the origins of capitals in the colonial and early independence eras, to much more specific empirical evidence about the capitals and their growth, and then back to more general themes concerning the capitals today and their relative importance within the US urban system. American Capitals does a masterful job of organizing its material and making the case for the significance of state capitals as a largely hidden aspect of the US federal and urban experiences.”
— John Agnew, coeditor of American Space / American Place
“This is a fascinating book, halfway between the cultural geography tradition where Wilbur Zelinsky and Donald W. Meining excelled some decades ago and the more formal French tradition of modelization and theoretical explanation of spatial patterns and urban systems. Christian Montès provides an enlightening description of the history of the location and planning of US capital cities, as well as the demographic and economic trends. Thanks to Montès, we now have an original comprehensive geographical understanding of US capital cities, which is indeed a capital topic for those who would like to get a deep understanding of a US territoriality.”
— Bernard Debarbieux, University of Geneva
“Christian Montès brilliantly answers a question few scholars have thought to ask: what do American state capitals mean? The result is a major contribution to our understanding of culture, identity, and urbanity. Montès writes with a fine eye for historical development—and local quirks like Squashtown, Montana, or Pig’s Eye, Minnesota. American Capitals is wise, important, meticulous, elegant, illuminating, unexpected, witty, and endlessly fascinating.”
— James A. Morone, coauthor of By the People: Debating American Government
“French geographer Christian Montès has written a truly comprehensive account of America’s state capitals. He focuses on how capitals were selected and how they evolved. His research is so thorough that this book will surely become the definitive study on the subject.”
— Journal of Historical Geography
"Meticulously researched with notes, references, and generous appendices with data on population, income, economic activities, and a summary of each state capital’s history, which makes it a good book to have on your shelf. American Capitals: A Historical Geography makes a welcome contribution."
— AAG Review of Books
“In this intriguing and demanding book, Christian Montès relentlessly employs social-scientific analysis and model building to try to understand the character of American state capitals.”
“Careful and diligent readers will come away with a new and enhanced understanding of state capitals.”
— Timothy R. Mahoney, Annals of Iowa
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Capitals - Christian Montès
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226080512.003.0001
[State capitals, Urban America, Capital selection, Developmental delay]
This introductory chapter frames the study. A first approach searches for the models throwing light on the processes at work and for the theories explaining the formation, evolution, and image of urban America that help in understanding capitals. The process of capital selection is understood as a revealing moment of crisis. The approach is incremental, the progressive building of an explanatory model, without predetermining its components. Capitals are symbolic places that participate in the territorial construction, along with interactive adjustments with other ways of territorial structuring. Capital cities were and are the embodiment of power. A second approach deals with the position capitals have in the American urban system: Are state capitals more than simply symbolic towns? Do they form a parallel system, disconnected from the classical one, largely based on economic criteria? Do state capitals express an imbalance between form and function? The developmental delay of many of them will be here addressed. (pages 1 - 13)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Capitals as Places of Memory - Christian Montès
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226080512.003.0002
[Places of memory, Condensation, Naming, Platting, Capitols, Public spaces]
This chapter underlines that capitals are singular in the American urban fabric, from physical and social point of views, because of the monumentality and the public spaces they offer. This sheds a light on their enduring symbolic power as places of memory. Following B. Debarbieux’s theoretical framework, capitals are seen as generic places, through the naming of capitals. It enhances their strong symbolic meaning, distinguishing them from the other cities in the state. Then condensation processes are studied, through the platting of capitals. It stages and translates the polity in the physical pattern of capital cities. Debarbieux’s figures are seen through the lens of the erection of monuments, the most impressive of which being the capitols. Once symbols of the reality of statehood, they have become symbols of permanence, linking the states with their history. Last, we stress the fact that “condensation” does not always encompass the whole place and the entire population of state capitals. This will be studied through the unique relationship between the public and the private spheres. Capitals certainly host and stage the most important public spaces and places in their states, but without always creating harmony and equality. (pages 14 - 61)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Geographical Patterns in the Migration of Capitals - Christian Montès
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226080512.003.0003
[Capitalistic migrations, Stability, Westward movement, Instability, Territorial construction, Chronology]
This chapter looks at the spatial patterns of the “capitalistic migrations” that almost all states have experienced, through a diachronic approach in the framework of American territorial construction. The relation to time differs according to periods, groups and individuals, but chronology has a heuristic value, particularly when the very object of the research is the chronological sequence of capitals. Therefore, this chapter aims at providing a first broad view of the numerous processes at work, along geographical patterns (stability, westward/centrality, rotating capitals, readjustment, apparently erratic). (pages 62 - 82)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
In Search of Explanatory Models - Christian Montès
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226080512.003.0004
[Puritanism, Boosterism, Model, Gateway, Small town, Representation]
This chapter draws on a diachronic perspective to identify explanatory models putting the processes of capitals’ selection in the larger framework of the American territorial construction. It thus explores the validity of the causes proposed by the literature. Seven “causal elements” are successively analyzed and hierarchized. They are interrogated after the elaboration of a first model based on chronology. The first causes to be analyzed are perceptions, which allow to study the relationships between Americans and their cities (Puritanism and distrust of cities, the small town ideal). The economic explanations will then be studied (the booster and the gateway models) addressing the question of the development delay of capitals. Lastly, politics, the most often quoted cause will be studied with geography through the notion of centrality (representation), because they are often linked. (pages 83 - 129)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Capital Choice and the Balance of Power - Christian Montès
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226080512.003.0005
[Democracy, Congress, Referendum, Territory, Model, Founding hero, Myth]
The first entry to this chapter furthers the study of the major factor of the capital selection process, politics. The aim is to build a model showing and putting into relation the factors at work in that process. This model is inductive because it does not stem from any theory or hypothesis, but from facts, notions or representations. The construction of the model dwells on the division of the political factor in more precise analyses. The first one deals with the evolution of the political system acting as a framework to the processes. That study emphasizes the stronger role of individuals than parties or political machines, but also deconstructs the myth of the founding hero. The analysis then tries to determine the weight of the three pillars of the American democracy (the executive, the legislative and the judicial) in the selection process, taking into account the effects of political instability on democracy, especially on the role directly given to “the People.” It is then possible to propose a tentative model, called “model of complexity.” The second entry of this chapter is based on case studies, which provide signifying variations to the model, by confronting it to specific times and spaces. (pages 130 - 167)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Evolution of State Capitals to the 1950s - Christian Montès
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226080512.003.0006
[Image, Urban hierarchy, Railroads, Industrialization, State boundaries]
This chapter begins to try and explain state capitals place in the American territorial construction and their position in the urban system. To address the developmental delay of many of them, it deals with what could be called the “Purgatory years” of state capitals, up to the 1950s when a majority experienced a slow demographic and economic growth in a fast growing nation and suffered a “Babylonian” image. Capitals often experienced a difficult economic start after having been selected, although they soon became social capitals. They then were mostly ignored by the modernization processes (railroads and industrialization) that reached their fullest extent between 1880 and 1930. Being capital could only boost an existing good or rather good situation and proved unable to create an important economic basis by itself. State boundaries and economic influence are based on two different logics. (pages 168 - 204)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
State Capitals since the 1950s - Christian Montès
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226080512.003.0007
[Aggiornamento, Post-industrial, Amenities, Tourism, Urban hierarchy]
This chapter looks at the current revival –or late awakening- of most state capitals, their opening to more political purity and economic success in the so-called “post-industrial” age (although they became only late higher education centers). However, the national urban hierarchy has not been fundamentally altered by their growth, which remains uneven. Some capitals are still heavily depending on state jobs, and may resent it. They are then individually analyzed first according to their economic situation (three types exist: modern, seemingly unchanged, and second rank), then to their quality of life. (pages 205 - 253)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Validating Models through a Chronological and Concrete Analysis - Christian Montès
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226080512.003.0008
[Columbus, Ohio, Des Moines, Iowa, Frankfort, Kentucky, Metropolization, Central place]
This chapter will test the model of complexity, while rendering it more concrete. It proposes a deeper study of the evolution of three capitals, encompassing their processes of choice as well as their subsequent evolution. The first, Columbus, Ohio, belongs to the category of capitals undergoing a contemporary metropolization process. It is also a new town built in the wilderness to be capital that grew to become one of the leading cities in its state. The second case, Des Moines, Iowa, is the central place of a mostly rural area that became its state’s leading city while remaining medium-sized. The last case, Frankfort, is an example of the small capital cities without hope of important growth and has never succeeded in rivaling the metropolises of Kentucky. (pages 254 - 285)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Losing Status - Christian Montès
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226080512.003.0009
[Memory, Heritage, Archaeological park, Tourism, Metropolitan areas]
This chapter sheds light on the fate of former capitals. Most are fully participating in the process of re-actualization of memories, which proved necessary, because former capitals are globally in a worse situation than current ones, from a demographic point of view at least. The growth of heritage awareness benefited many former capitals in the form of archaeological parks (Williamsburg, San Felipe de Austin…) or tourism-induced growth (New Castle, Guthrie…). For the remaining ones it is only an asset among others to lure visitors (Monterey, Golden) or retirees (Prescott). Last, some have been included into metropolitan areas (Benicia, Vallejo, Chillicothe). (pages 286 - 307)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
State Capitals Today - Christian Montès
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226080512.003.0010
[Territorial organization, American democracy, Memory, Knowledge economy, Capitol campus]
This chapter concludes the study by addressing the question of the changes in the place of capitals in today’s United States. On the one side, capitals rule the states in an immaterial way, active memories of the ideal political order set up by the Founding Fathers, largely differing from contemporary economic metropolitan systems. On the other side, they are now following more closely the path of other cities, owing to their advantages in the knowledge economy. However, “capitol campuses” remain often distinct from the rest of capital cities. (pages 308 - 312)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
