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Western United States

The Western United States, also called the American West, the Western States, the Far West, and the West, is the region comprising the westernmost U.S. states. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term the West changed. Before around 1800, the crest of the Appalachian Mountains was seen as the western frontier. The frontier moved westward and eventually the lands west of the Mississippi River were considered the West.

The U.S. Census Bureau's definition of the 13 westernmost states includes the Rocky Mountains and the Great Basin to the Pacific Coast, and the mid-Pacific islands state, Hawaii. To the east of the Western United States is the Midwestern United States and the Southern United States, with Canada to the north, and Mexico to the south.

The West contains several major biomes, including arid and semi-arid plateaus and plains, particularly in the American Southwest; forested mountains, including three major ranges, the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, and Rocky Mountains; the long coastal shoreline of the American Pacific Coast; and the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest.

Geographic definition
The Western United States is the largest region of the country, covering nearly half the land area of the contiguous United States. It is also the most geographically diverse, incorporating geographic regions such as the temperate rainforests of the Northwest, the highest mountain ranges, including the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and the Cascade Range, numerous glaciers, and the western edge of the Great Plains. It also contains the majority of the desert areas located in the United States. The Mojave and the Great Basin deserts lie entirely within the Western region, along with parts of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts (the latter extends significantly into Texas, while both extend into Mexico). Given this expansive and diverse geography it is no wonder that the region is difficult to define precisely. Sensing a possible shift in the popular understanding of the West as a region in the early 1990s, historian Walter Nugent conducted a survey of three groups of professionals with ties to the region: a large group of Western historians (187 respondents), and two smaller groups, 25 journalists and publishers and 39 Western authors. A majority of the historian respondents placed the eastern boundary of the West east of the Census definition out on the eastern edge of the Great Plains or on the Mississippi River. The survey respondents as a whole showed just how little agreement there was on the boundaries of the West.

Subregions
The region is split into two smaller units or divisions, by the U.S. Census Bureau:

 * Mountain states: Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and Nevada
 * Pacific states: Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, and Hawaii

Other classifications distinguish between Southwest and Northwest. Arizona, New Mexico, West Texas, and the Oklahoma panhandle are typically considered to be the Southwest states. Meanwhile, the states of Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington can be considered part of the Northwest or Pacific Northwest.

The term West Coast is commonly used to refer to just California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska, whereas Hawaii is more geographically isolated from the continental U.S. and does not necessarily fit in any of these subregions.

Outlying areas
The three inhabited Pacific U.S. territories (American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) are sometimes considered part of the Western United States. American Samoa is in Polynesia in the South Pacific Ocean, while Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands are in the Mariana Islands in the western North Pacific Ocean. Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands have district courts within the 9th Circuit, which includes western states such as California and Nevada. (See District Court of Guam and District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands). American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands are also considered part of the western U.S. by the U.S. National Park Service, the Federal Reserve Bank system, FEMA, and the USGS.

Demographics
The population distribution by race in the Western United States (2022):
 * 51.9% White (47.1% non-Hispanic)
 * 30.8% Hispanic or Latino ethnicity (of any race)
 * 10.8% Asian (10.6% non-Hispanic)
 * 4.5% Black or African-American (4.3% non-Hispanic)
 * 1.9% American Indian or Alaska Native (1.1% non-Hispanic)
 * 0.6% Pacific Islander (0.6% non-Hispanic)
 * 13.3% Some other race (0.6% non-Hispanic)
 * 17.0% Two or more races (5.0% non-Hispanic)

As defined by the United States Census Bureau, the Western region of the United States includes 13 states, with a total 2020 population of 78,588,572.

The West is one of the most sparsely settled areas in the United States with 49.5 /mi2. Only Texas with 78.0 /mi2, Washington with 86.0 /mi2, and California with 213.4 /mi2 exceed the national average of 77.98 /mi2. As of 2022, just under half of the 78.7 million residents of the West live in California.

The entire Western region has also been strongly influenced by European, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Native Americans; it contains the largest number of minorities in the U.S. While most of the studies of racial dynamics in America such as riots in Los Angeles have been written about European and African-Americans, in many cities in the West and California, whites and blacks together are less than half the population because of the preference for the region by Hispanics and Asians. African and European Americans, however, continue to wield a stronger political influence because of the lower rates of citizenship and voting among Asians and Hispanics.

According to 2022 estimates from the Census Bureau, the largest ancestries reported in the West are Mexican (24.2%), German (10.1%), English (9.5%), Irish (7.2%), Italian (3.5%), Filipino (3.4%), and Chinese (3.3%).

The West also contains much of the Native American population in the U.S., particularly in the large reservations in the Mountain and Desert States. As of 2022, the West is home to 365,351 Navajo, 109,208 Apache, and 78,364 Blackfeet, as well as 276,082 people identifying as Indigenous Mexican.

The largest concentrations for African-Americans in the West can be found in San Diego, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, Fresno, San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, and Colorado Springs.

The Western United States has a higher sex ratio (more males than females) than any other region in the United States.

Because the tide of development had not yet reached most of the West when conservation became a national issue, agencies of the federal government own and manage vast areas of land. (The most important among these are the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management within the Interior Department, and the U.S. Forest Service within the Agriculture Department.) National parks are reserved for recreational activities such as fishing, camping, hiking, and boating, but other government lands also allow commercial activities like ranching, logging, and mining. In recent years, some local residents who earn their livelihoods on federal land have come into conflict with the land's managers, who are required to keep land use within environmentally acceptable limits.

The largest city in the region is Los Angeles, located on the West Coast. Other West Coast cities include San Diego, San Bernardino, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, Seattle, Tacoma, Anchorage, and Portland – some of which are dozens of miles inland. Prominent cities in the Mountain States include Denver, Colorado Springs, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Reno, Salt Lake City, Boise, El Paso, and Billings.

Natural geography

Along the Pacific Ocean coast lie the Coast Ranges, which, while not approaching the scale of the Rocky Mountains, are formidable nevertheless. They collect a large part of the airborne moisture moving in from the ocean. East of the Coast Ranges lie several cultivated fertile valleys, notably the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys of California and the Willamette Valley of Oregon.

Beyond the valleys lie the Sierra Nevada in the south and the Cascade Range in the north. Mount Whitney, at 14505 ft the tallest peak in the contiguous 48 states, is in the Sierra Nevada. The Cascades are also volcanic. Mount Rainier, a volcano in Washington, is also over 14000 ft. Mount St. Helens, a volcano in the Cascades, erupted explosively in 1980. A major volcanic eruption at Mount Mazama around 4860 BC formed Crater Lake. These mountain ranges see heavy precipitation, capturing most of the moisture that remains after the Coast Ranges, and creating a rain shadow to the east forming vast stretches of arid land. These dry areas encompass much of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. The Mojave Desert and Sonoran Desert along with other deserts are found here.

Beyond the deserts lie the Rocky Mountains. In the north, they run almost immediately east of the Cascade Range, so that the desert region is only a few miles wide by the time one reaches the Canada–US border. The Rockies are hundreds of miles wide and run uninterrupted from New Mexico to Alaska. The Rocky Mountain Region is the highest overall area of the United States, with an average elevation of above 4000 ft. The tallest peaks of the Rockies, 54 of which are over 14000 ft, are found in central and western Colorado. East of the Rocky Mountains is the Great Plains, the western portions (for example, the eastern half of Colorado) of which are generally considered to be part of the western United States.

The West has several long rivers that empty into the Pacific Ocean, while the eastern rivers run into the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River forms the easternmost possible boundary for the West today. The Missouri River, a tributary of the Mississippi, flows from its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains eastward across the Great Plains, a vast grassy plateau, before sloping gradually down to the forests and hence to the Mississippi. The Colorado River snakes through the Mountain states, at one point forming the Grand Canyon.

The Colorado River is a major source of water in the Southwest and many dams, such as the Hoover Dam, form reservoirs along it. So much water is drawn for drinking water throughout the West and irrigation in California that in most years, water from the Colorado River no longer reaches the Gulf of California. The Columbia River, the largest river in volume flowing into the Pacific Ocean from North America, and its tributary, the Snake River, water the Pacific Northwest. The Platte runs through Nebraska and was known for being a mile (2 km) wide but only a half-inch (1 cm) deep. The Rio Grande forms the border between Texas and Mexico before turning due north and splitting New Mexico in half.

According to the United States Coast Guard, "The Western Rivers System consists of the Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, Cumberland, Arkansas, and White Rivers and their tributaries, and certain other rivers that flow towards the Gulf of Mexico." The Ohio River portion of the system includes parts of several Atlantic coastal states, from Georgia to New York.

Climate and agriculture
Most of the public land held by the U.S. National Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management is in the Western states. Public lands account for 25 to 75 percent of the total land area in these states.

The climate of the West is semi-arid, yet parts of the region get high amounts of rain or snow. Other parts are true desert which receive less than 5 in of rain per year. The climate is increasingly unstable, and subject to periods of severe drought.

The seasonal temperatures vary greatly throughout the West. Low elevations on the West Coast have warm summers and mild winters with little to no snow. The desert southwest has very hot summers and mild winters. While the mountains in the southwest receive generally large amounts of snow. The Inland Northwest has a continental climate of warm to hot summers and cold to bitterly cold winters.

Annual rainfall is greater in the eastern portions, gradually tapering off until reaching the Pacific Coast where it increases again. In fact, the greatest annual rainfall in the United States falls in the coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest. Drought is much more common in the West than the rest of the United States. The driest place recorded in the U.S. is Death Valley, California. In Western states, drought is closely associated with fire risk, and there have been a number of notable wildfires causing extensive property damage and wildlife habitat destruction. The Western United States is predicted to experience drought-like conditions for much of the 21st century.

Violent thunderstorms occur east of the Rockies. Tornadoes occur every spring on the southern plains, with the most common and most destructive centered on Tornado Alley, which covers eastern portions of the West, (Texas to North Dakota), and all states in between and to the east.

Agriculture varies depending on rainfall, irrigation, soil, elevation, and temperature extremes. The arid regions generally support only livestock grazing, chiefly beef cattle. The wheat belt extends from Texas through The Dakotas, producing most of the wheat and soybeans in the U.S. and exporting more to the rest of the world. Irrigation in the Southwest allows the growth of great quantities of fruits, nuts, and vegetables as well as grain, hay, and flowers. Texas is a major cattle and sheep raising area, as well as the nation's largest producer of cotton. Washington is famous for its apples, and Idaho for its potatoes. California and Arizona are major producers of citrus crops, however, declining supplies of water, as well as urban sprawl have contributed to a sharp decline in citrus production in Arizona. Many varieties of chile peppers are grown in the valleys of New Mexico.

Starting in 1902, Congress passed a series of acts authorizing the establishment of the United States Bureau of Reclamation to oversee water development projects in seventeen western states.

During the first half of the 20th century, dams and irrigation projects provided water for rapid agricultural growth throughout the West and brought prosperity for several states, where agriculture had previously only been subsistence level. Following World War II, the West's cities experienced an economic and population boom. The population growth, mostly in the Southwest states of New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada, has strained water and power resources, with water diverted from agricultural uses to major population centers, such as the Las Vegas Valley and Los Angeles.

Geology
Plains make up much of the eastern portion of the West, underlain with sedimentary rock from the Upper Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras. The Rocky Mountains expose igneous and metamorphic rock both from the Precambrian and from the Phanerozoic eon. The Inter-mountain States and Pacific Northwest have huge expanses of volcanic rock from the Cenozoic era. Salt flats and salt lakes reveal a time when the great inland seas covered much of what is now the West.

The Pacific states are the most geologically active areas in the United States. Earthquakes cause damage every few to several years in California. While the Pacific states are the most volcanically active areas, extinct volcanoes and lava flows are found throughout most of the West.

History
The Western United States has been populated by Native Americans since at least 11,000 years ago, when the first Paleo-Indians arrived. Pre-Columbian trade routes to kingdoms and empires such as the Mound Builders existed in places such as Yellowstone National Park since around 1000 AD. Major settlement of the western territories developed rapidly in the 1840s, largely through the Oregon Trail and the California Gold Rush of 1849. California experienced such a rapid growth in a few short months that it was admitted to statehood in 1850 without the normal transitory phase of becoming an official territory.

One of the largest migrations in American history occurred in the 1840s as the Latter Day Saints left the Midwest to build a theocracy in Utah.

Both Omaha, Nebraska and St. Louis, Missouri laid claim to the title, "Gateway to the West" during this period. Omaha, home to the Union Pacific Railroad and the Mormon Trail, made its fortunes on outfitting settlers; St. Louis built itself upon the vast fur trade in the West before its settlement.

The 1850s were marked by political battles over the expansion of slavery into the western territories, issues leading to the Civil War.

Between 1863 and 1869, North America's first transcontinental railroad was constructed to connect the eastern US with the Pacific coast. The resulting railroad connection revolutionized the settlement and economy of the American West by making the transportation of passengers and freight quicker, safer, and cheaper.

The history of the American West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries has acquired a cultural mythos in the literature and cinema of the United States. The image of the cowboy, the homesteader, and westward expansion took real events and transmuted them into a myth of the west which has shaped much of American popular culture since the late 19th century.

Writers as diverse as Bret Harte and Zane Grey celebrated or derided cowboy culture, while artists such as Frederic Remington created western art as a method of recording the expansion into the west. The American cinema, in particular, created the genre of the western movie, which, in many cases, use the West as a metaphor for the virtue of self-reliance and an American ethos. The contrast between the romanticism of culture about the West and the actuality of the history of the westward expansion has been a theme of late 20th and early 21st century scholarship about the West. Cowboy culture has become embedded in the American experience as a common cultural touchstone, and modern forms as diverse as country and western music have celebrated the sense of isolation and independence of spirit inspired by the frontiersmen on "virgin land".

20th century

The advent of the automobile enabled the average American to tour the West. Western businessmen promoted Route 66 as a means to bring tourism and industry to the West. In the 1950s, representatives from all the western states built the Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center to showcase western culture and greet travelers from the East. During the latter half of the 20th century, several transcontinental interstate highways crossed the West bringing more trade and tourists from the East. Oil boom towns in Texas and Oklahoma rivaled the old mining camps for their rawness and wealth. The Dust Bowl forced children of the original homesteaders even further west.

The movies became America's chief entertainment source featuring western fiction, later the community of Hollywood in Los Angeles became the headquarters of the mass media such as radio and television production.

California has emerged as the most populous state and one of the top 10 economies in the world. Massive late 19th–20th century population and settlement booms created two megalopolis areas of the Greater Los Angeles/Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area/Northern California regions, one of the nation's largest metropolitan areas and in the top 25 largest urban areas in the world. Five more metropolitan areas of San Bernardino-Riverside, San Diego, Denver, Phoenix, and Seattle have over a million residents, while the three fastest growing metro areas were the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, the Las Vegas metropolitan area; and the Portland metropolitan area.

Since the mid-1970s, historians of the West have emphasized the World War II years as a major watershed, as a region experienced enormous social and economic change, and became the pacesetter for societal evolution. The population soared, especially in metropolitan areas, as a result of massive expansion of the manufacture of airplanes, ships and munitions and of military and Naval training facilities. California upgraded universities to world-class status, intensified scientific research, and expanded infrastructure. After the war millions more migrated using the GI Bill to buy suburban homes, many of them recalling rewarding wartime experience in military training facilities. The region had always been more democratic with greater racial and gender equality, and continued as a national pacesetter in modernization. New problems emerged, especially environmental issues where westerners took the lead in areas such as the allocation of scarce water resources as well as dealing with smog and air pollution. More recently historians have looked at nuances, pointing out that some of the trends began before 1941.

Los Angeles has the largest Mexican population outside of Mexico, while San Francisco has the largest Chinese community in North America and also has a large LGBT community, and Oakland, California has a large percentage of residents being African-American, as well as Long Beach, California which also has a significant black community. The state of Utah has a Mormon majority (estimated at 62.4% in 2004), while some cities like Albuquerque, New Mexico; Billings, Montana; Spokane, Washington; and Tucson, Arizona are located near Indian reservations. In remote areas there are settlements of Alaskan Natives and Native Hawaiians.

Culture

Historically, the traditional culture of the Western United States has been defined by the cowboys, pioneers, and Native Americans who first inhabited the Wild West. The sparse geography of the western deserts (Mojave Desert, Great Basin Desert) and isolated small towns, combined with the broad freeways (U.S. Route 66) and long railroads (First transcontinental railroad), have contributed to the popular image of the west as a desolate, open space full of unending roads.

Facing both the Pacific Ocean and the Mexican border, the West has been shaped by a variety of ethnic groups. Hawaii is the only state in the union in which Asian Americans outnumber white American residents. People from many countries in Asia settled in California and other coastal states in several waves of immigration since the 19th century, contributing to the Gold rush, the building of the transcontinental railroad, agriculture, and more recently, high technology.

The border states—California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas—and other southwestern states such as Colorado, Utah, and Nevada all have large Hispanic populations, and the many Spanish place names attest to their history as former Spanish and Mexican territories. Mexican-Americans have also had a growing population in Northwestern states of Oregon and Washington, as well as the southern states of Texas and Oklahoma.

In the Pacific States, the wide areas filled with small towns, farms, and forests are supplemented by a few big port cities which have evolved into world centers for the media and technology industries. Now the second largest city in the nation, Los Angeles is best known as the home of the Hollywood film industry; the area around Los Angeles also was a major center for the aerospace industry by World War II, though Boeing, located in Washington state would lead the aerospace industry. Fueled by the growth of Los Angeles, as well as the San Francisco Bay area, including Silicon Valley, the center of America's high tech industry, California has become the most populous of all the 50 states. Oregon and Washington have also seen rapid growth with the rise of Boeing and Microsoft along with agriculture and resource based industries.

Alaska—the northernmost state in the Union—is a vast land of few people, many of them native, and of great stretches of wilderness, protected in national parks and wildlife refuges. Hawaii's location makes it a major gateway between the United States and Asia, as well as a center for tourism.

The Mountain States subregion includes Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. The mountain states have relatively low population densities, and developed as ranching and mining areas that only recently became urbanized. Most of them have highly individualistic cultures, and have worked to balance the interests of urban development, recreation, and the environment.

Culturally distinctive points of the mountain states include the large Mormon population in the Mormon Corridor, including southeastern Idaho, Utah, Northern Arizona, and Nevada; the extravagant casino resort towns of Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada; and the numerous American Indian tribal reservations.

Major metropolitan areas
These are the largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) with a population above 500,000 in the 13 Western states. Population figures are as of April 1, 2020, as enumerated by the United States Census Bureau:

Other population centers

 * The MSA of El Paso, although belonging to Texas, considered part of the Southern United States, it is sometimes also considered part of the Western United States. Its enumerated population in April 2020 was 868,859.
 * The largest MSA in Alaska is Anchorage; it has an enumerated population of 398,328, as of April 2020.
 * In the outlying areas of the Western United States, the largest population centers are Tafuna in American Samoa; Dededo in Guam; and Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands.

Politics

The region's distance from historical centers of power in the East, and the celebrated "frontier spirit" of its settlers offer two clichés for explaining the region's independent, heterogeneous politics. Historically, the West was the first region to see widespread women's suffrage, with women casting votes in Utah and Wyoming as early as 1870, five decades before the 19th Amendment was ratified by the nation. California birthed both the property rights and conservation movements, and spawned such phenomena as the Taxpayer Revolt and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. It has also produced three presidents: Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan.

The prevalence of libertarian political attitudes is widespread. For example, the majority of Western states have legalized medicinal marijuana (all but Idaho and Wyoming) and some forms of gambling (except Utah); Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and Montana have legalized physician-assisted suicide; most rural counties in Nevada allow licensed brothels, and voters in Alaska, Colorado, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington have legalized recreational use of marijuana.

California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Colorado, Hawaii and New Mexico lean toward the Democratic Party. In recent times, as seen in the 2020 United States presidential election and 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election, Arizona is also beginning to lean towards the Democratic Party as well. San Francisco's two main political parties are the Green Party and the Democratic Party. One of the longest-serving Democratic congressional leaders is from the region: former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi of California.

Alaska and most Mountain states are more Republican, with Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming being Republican strongholds. The state of Arizona has been won by the Republican presidential candidate in every election except three times since 1948, but in 2020 Arizona voted Democratic. Also, in 2018 and 2020, the GOP lost both U.S. Senate seats in Arizona to the Democrats. The states of Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming have been won by every Republican presidential nominee since 1964.

The state of Nevada is considered a political bellwether, having correctly voted for every president except twice (in 1976 and 2016) since 1912. New Mexico too is considered a bellwether, having voted for the popular vote winner in every presidential election since statehood, except in 1976.

As the fastest-growing demographic group, after Asians, Latinos are hotly contested by both parties. Immigration is an important political issue for this group. Backlash against undocumented immigrants led to the passage of California Proposition 187 in 1994, a ballot initiative which would have denied many public services to them. Association of this proposal with California Republicans, especially incumbent governor Pete Wilson, drove many Hispanic voters to the Democrats.

The following table shows the breakdown of party affiliation of governors, attorneys general, state legislative houses, and U.S. congressional delegation for the Western states,.

The following table shows the breakdown of party affiliation of governors, attorneys general, state legislative houses, and U.S. congressional delegation for the outlying areas of the Western United States,.

Health
The Western United States consistently ranks well in health measures. The rate of potentially preventable hospitalizations in the Western United States was consistently lower than other regions from 2005 to 2011. While the proportion of maternal or neonatal hospital stays was higher in the Western United States relative to other regions, the proportion of medical stays in hospitals was lower than in other regions in 2012.

Surveys

 * Deutsch, Sarah. Making a Modern U.S. West: The Contested Terrain of a Region and Its Borders 1898–1940. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022.
 * Doig, Ivan. This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind. New York. 1978.
 * Findlay, John M. The Mobilized American West, 1940–2000. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2023. Comprehensive history online review of this book
 * Malone, Michael P., and Richard W. Etulain. The American West: A Twentieth-Century History. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
 * Milner II, Clyde A; O'Connor, Carol A.; Sandweiss, Martha A. The Oxford History of the American West. Oxford University Press, 1994.
 * Morgan, Neil Bowen. Westward Tilt: The American West Today.  New York: Random House, 1963.
 * Pomeroy, Earl. The American Far West in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. ISBN 0300158521
 * Schwantes, Carlos Arnaldo. Going Places: Transportation Redefines the Twentieth-Century West.  Bloomington:  Indiana University Press, 2003.
 * Stegner, Wallace. The Sound of Mountain Water: The Changing American West. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969.
 * White, Richard. A New History of the American West: 'It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own.' Norman:  University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
 * Whitehead, John. Completing the Union: Alaska, Hawai'i, and the Battle for Statehood. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004
 * Wiley, Peter, and Robert Gottlieb. Empires in the Sun: The Rise of the New American West. New York. 1982.

Economy

 * Graham, Don. Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Empire.  Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2003.

 * Nash, Gerald D. A.P. Giannini and the Bank of America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
 * Nash, Gerald D. The Federal Landscape: An Economic History of the Twentieth-Century West. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 1999.
 * O'Mara, Margaret. The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America. New York: Penguin Press, 2019.

 * Robbins, William G. Colony and Empire: The Capitalist Transformation of the American West. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994.

Environment

 * Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire : A Season in the Wilderness. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968.
 * Castaneda, Christopher J., and Lee M. A. Simpson, eds. River City and Valley Life: An Environmental History of the Sacramento region. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013. In California; online
 * Cawley, R. McGreggor. Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and Environmental Politics. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993. On conservatives.
 * Cunfer, Geoff, and Bill Waiser, eds. Bison and People on the North American Great Plains: A Deep Environmental History. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2016. online.
 * Dant, Sara. Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2023. online, also see online book review
 * DeBuys, William. Enchantment and Exploitation: The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range.  Albuquerque:  University of New Mexico Press, 1985.
 * DeVoto, Bernard. "The West: A Plundered Province." Harper's Magazine 169 (1934): 355–364.
 * Dobie, J. Frank. The Longhorns. Boston: Little, Brown, 1941.
 * Dobie, J. Frank. The Mustangs. Boston: Little, Brown, 1952.
 * Dobie. J. Frank. The Voice of the Coyote. Boston: Little, Brown, 1949.
 * Flores, Dan. The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. online.
 * Fradkin, Philip. A River No More: The Colorado River and the West, 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
 * Frehner, Brian, and Kathleen A. Brosnan, eds. The Greater Plains: Rethinking a Region's Environmental Histories. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. online.
 * Harvey, Mark W. T. "Echo Park, Glen Canyon, and the Postwar Wilderness Movement." Pacific Historical Review (1991): 43–67. online Colorado River region
 * Hollon, W. Eugene. The Great American Desert, Then and Now. Lincoln:  University of Nebraska Press, 1975.
 * Huggard, Christopher, and Arthur R. Gómez. Forests under Fire: A Century of Ecosystem Mismanagement in the Southwest. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001.
 * Hundley Jr., Norris. Water and the West: The Colorado River Compact and the Politics of Water in the American West. 2nd ed. University of California Press, 2009.
 * Krutch, Joseph Wood. The Voice of the Desert: A Naturalist's Interpretation. New York: William Sloane Associates, 1954.
 * Lamm, Richard D., and Michael McCarthy. The Angry West: A Vulnerable Land and Its Future. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1982.
 * Logan, Michael F. Desert Cities: The Environmental History of Phoenix and Tucson. Pittsburgh, PA; University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006.
 * Needham, Andrew. Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest.  Princeton, NJ:  University of Princeton Press, 2014.
 * Pisani, Donald J. Water, Land, and Law in the West: The Limits of Public Policy, 1850-1920. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996.
 * Pyne, Stephen J. Fire:  A Brief History.  Seattle:    University of Washington Press, 2001.
 * Pyne, Stephen J. Fire on the Rim: A Firefighter's Season at the Grand Canyon.  New York: Grove Press, 1989.
 * Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water. Penguin, 1993. Says the villain was the federal Bureau of Reclamation see ; also see online copy.
 * Rowley, William D. Reclaiming the Arid West: The Career of Francis G. Newlands. Bloomington:  Indiana University Press, 1996.
 * Rundell Jr., Walter. Oil in West Texas and New Mexico:  A Pictorial History of the Permian Basin.  College Station:  Texas A & M University Press, 1982.
 * Stegner, Wallace. The American West As Living Space. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987.
 * Sturgeon, Stephen Craig. The Politics of Western Water: The Congressional Career of Wayne Aspinall. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2002.
 * Vogel, David. California Greenin': How the Golden State became an Environmental Leader Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019).
 * White, Richard. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River.  New York:  Hill and Wang, 1995.
 * Wild, Peter. Pioneer Conservationists of Western America (1979) online
 * Worster, Donald. Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West Oxford University Press, 1992. online
 * Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl:  The Southern Plains in the 1930s.  New York:  Oxford University Press, 1979.
 * Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987.

Historiography

 * Billington, Ray Allen. America's Frontier Heritage. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1984.
 * Etulain, Richard W., "Clio's Disciples on the Rio Grande: Western History at the University of New Mexico", New Mexico Historical Review 87 (Summer 2012): 277–298.
 * Etulain, Richard W. Telling Western Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry. Albuquerque:  University of New Mexico Press, 1999.
 * Etulain, Richard W. The American West and Its Interpreters. Albuquerque:  University of New Mexico Press, 2023.
 * Etulain, Richard W. Writing Western History: Essays On Major Western Historians Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 2002.
 * Faragher, John Mack, ed. Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: The Significance of the Frontier in American History and Other Essays. New York: Holt, 1994.
 * Frantz, Joe B. Aspects of the American West: Three Essays. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1976.
 * Gressley, Gene. "Whither Western American History? Speculations on a Direction," Pacific Historical Review 53, no. 4 (1984): 483–501.
 * Malone, Michael P. "Beyond the Last Frontier: Toward a New Approach to Western American History." The Western Historical Quarterly 20, no. 4 (1989): 409–27.
 * Malone, Michael P., ed. Historians and the American West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
 * Nash, Gerald D. Creating the West: Historical Interpretations, 1890–1990.  Albuquerque:  University of New Mexico Press, 1991.
 * Nash, Gerald D., and Richard W. Etulain. The Twentieth-Century West: Historical Interpretations. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989.
 * Norris Jr., Hundley, and John A. Schutz, ed. The American West: Frontier and Region--Interpretations by John Walton Caughey. Los Angeles, CA: Ward Ritchie Press, 1969.
 * Pomeroy, Earl. "Toward a Reorientation of Western History: Continuity and Environment." The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41, no. 4 (1955): 579–600.
 * Prince, Gregory A. Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History.  Salt Lake City:  University of Utah Press, 2016.
 * Rensink, Brenden W., ed. The North American West in the Twenty-First Century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022.
 * Ridge, Martin. "The Life of an Idea: The Significance of Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis." Montana: The Magazine of Western History 41, no. 1 (1991): 2–13.
 * Sonnichsen, C. L. The Ambidextrous Historian: Historical Writers and Writing in the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981.
 * Stegner, Wallace and Richard W. Etulain. Stegner: Conversations on History and Literature. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983.

Labor

 * Andrews, Thomas G. Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
 * Brykit, James W. Forging the Copper Collar: Arizona's Labor-Management War of 1901-1921. Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1982.
 * Lukas, J. Anthony. Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.
 * Schwantes, Carlos Arnaldo. Radical Heritage: Labor, Socialism, and Reform in Washington and British Columbia, 1885-1917. Seattle:  University of Washington Press, 1979.

Military history

 * Amundson, Michael A. Yellowcake Towns : Uranium Mining Communities in the American West. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2002.
 * Bolton, Roger E. Defense Purchases and Regional Growth. Washington, D.C. 1966.
 * Brilliant, Mark and David M. Kennedy, eds. World War II and the West It Wrought. Redwood City, CA:  Stanford University Press. 2020. excerpt
 * Clayton, James L. "Impact of the Cold War on the Economies of California and Utah." Pacific Historical Review, 36 (1967): 449–473.
 * Fernlund, Kevin J., ed. The Cold War American West, 1945–1989. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.
 * Findlay, John M. and Hevley, Bruce W. Atomic Frontier Days : Hanford and the American West. Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest in Association with Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011.
 * Heefner, Gretchen. The Missile Next Door: The Minuteman in the American Heartland. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
 * Hevly, Bruce W. and John M. Findlay, ed. The Atomic West. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998.
 * Hull, McAllister, with Amy Bianco. Rider of the Pale Horse: A Memoir of Los Alamos and Beyond. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.
 * Hunner, Jon. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Cold War, and the Atomic West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009.
 * Larson, T.A. Wyoming's War Years, 1941–1945. Laramie: University of Wyoming, 1954.
 * Lotchin, Roger. Japanese American Relocation in World War II: A Reconsideration. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
 * Lotchin, Roger W. "The Metropolitan-Military Complex in Comparative Perspective: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, 1919–1941." Journal of the West, 20 (July 1979): 19–30.
 * Martini, Edwin A. Proving Grounds: Militarized Landscapes, Weapons Testing, and the Environmental Impact of U.S. Bases. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015.
 * Nash, Gerald D. The American West Transformed: The Impact of the Second World War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.
 * Nash, Gerald D. World War II and the West: Reshaping the Economy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1990.
 * Rosier, Paul C. "'They Are Ancestral Homelands': Race, Place, and Politics in Cold War Native America, 1945-1961." The Journal of American History 92, no. 4 (2006): 1300–26.
 * Szasz, Ferenc Morton. The Day the Sun Rose Twice: The Story of the Trinity Site Nuclear Explosion, July 16, 1945. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984.

Mythic West

 * Athearn, Robert G.The Mythic West in Twentieth-Century America. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986.
 * Etulain, Richard W. Re-Imagining the Modern American West: A Century of Fiction, History, and Art. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 1996.
 * Gibson, Arrell M. The Santa Fe and Taos Colonies: Age of the Muses, 1900–1942. Norman: University of New Mexico Press, 1988.
 * Lehan, Richard. Quest West: American Intellectual and Cultural Transformations. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014.
 * Savage Jr., William W. The Cowboy Hero: His Image in American History and Culture. Norman:  University of Oklahoma Press, 1979.

Native Americans

 * Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West.  New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.
 * Debo, Angie. And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes. Princeton, NJ:  University of Princeton Press, 1968.
 * Deloria Jr. Vine, and Clifford M. Lytle. American Indians, American Justice.  Austin:  University of Texas Press, 1983.
 * Fixico, Donald L. Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945–1960. Albuquerque:  University of New Mexico Press, 1986.
 * Iverson, Peter. When Indians Became Cowboys: Native Peoples and Cattle Ranching in the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.
 * Parman, Donald Lee. Indians and the American West in the Twentieth Century.  Bloomington:  Indiana University Press, 1994.

Politics

 * Danbom, David B. Bridging the Distance: Common Issues of the Rural West. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015.
 * Fernlund, Kevin J. Lyndon B. Johnson and Modern America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009.
 * Iverson, Peter. Barry Goldwater: Native Arizonan. Norman:  University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
 * Lowitt, Richard. The New Deal and the West. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984 online
 * Rothman, Hal K. LBJ's Texas White House: 'Our Heart's Home.' College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001.
 * Smith, Thomas G. Stewart L. Udall: Steward of the Land.  Albuquerque:  University of New Mexico Press, 2017.
 * Stratton, David H. Tempest Over Teapot Dome: The Story of Albert B. Fall. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.
 * Young, Nancy Beck. Two Suns of the Southwest:  Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, and the 1964 Battle between Liberalism and Conservatism.  Lawrence:  University Press of Kansas, 2019.
 * Young, Nancy Beck. Two Suns of the Southwest:  Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, and the 1964 Battle between Liberalism and Conservatism.  Lawrence:  University Press of Kansas, 2019.

Reference

 * Lamar, Howard. The New Encyclopedia of the American West. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
 * Newark, Peter. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Old West. Reprint, New York:  Gallery Books, 1985.
 * Witschi, Nicolas S., ed. A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011.
 * Witschi, Nicolas S., ed. A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011.
 * Witschi, Nicolas S., ed. A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011.

Religion

 * Avella, Steven M. "Catholicism in the Twentieth-Century American West:  The Next Frontier."  The Catholic Historical Review 97, no. 2 (2011): 219–49.
 * Stegner, Wallace. Mormon Country. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1942.

Tourism

 * Barber, Alicia. Reno’s Big Gamble: Image and Reputation in the Biggest Little City.  Lawrence:  University Press of Kansas.  2008.
 * Cottam, Erica. Hubbell Trading Post: Trade, Tourism, and the Navajo Southwest. Norman:  University of Oklahoma Press, 2015.
 * McCormack, Kara L. Imagining Tombstone: The Town Too Tough to Die. Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 2016.
 * Pomeroy, Earl. In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America. New York: Knopf, 1957.
 * Rothman, Hal K. Devil's Bargains: Tourism and the Twentieth-Century American West. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998.
 * Rugh, Susan Sessions. "Branding Utah: Industrial Tourism in the Postwar American West." Western Historical Quarterly 37, no. 4 (2006): 445–472.
 * Stratton, David H. Tucumcari Tonite!: A Story of Railroads, Route 66, and the Waning of a Western Town. Albuquerque:  University of New Mexico Press, 2022.
 * Wrobel, David. Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory, and the Creation of the American West.  Lawrence:  University Press of Kansas, 2002.

Urban West

 * Cline, Platt. Mountain Town: Flagstaff's First Century.  Flagstaff, AZ:  Northland Publishing, 1994.
 * Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles. New York: Verso, 1990.
 * Findlay, John M. Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940.  Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1992.
 * Gómez, Arthur R. Quest for the Golden Circle: The Four Corners and the Metropolitan West, 1945-1970. Albuquerque:  University of New Mexico, 1994.
 * Leonard, Stephen J., and Thomas J. Noel. Denver: Mining Camp to Metropolis.  Boulder:  University Press of Colorado, 1990.
 * Luckingham, Bradford. The Urban Southwest: A Profile History of Albuquerque, El Paso, Phoenix, and Tucson. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1982.
 * Nash, Gerald D. The American West in the Twentieth Century – A Short History of an Urban Oasis. Hoboken, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973.
 * Rothman, Hal. Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-First Century.  Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge, 2003.
 * Sonnichsen, C.L. Tucson: The Life and Times of an American City. Norman:  University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
 * Stratten, David H., ed. Spokane and the Inland Empire: An Interior Pacific Northwest Anthology. Rev. ed.  Pullman:  Washington State University Press, 2007.
 * Wilson, Chris. The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern Regional Tradition.  Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997.
 * Wilson, Chris. The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern Regional Tradition.  Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997.

title: Western United States


text:
Kshatriya

Kshatriya (क्षत्रिय, from Sanskrit kṣatra, "rule, authority"; also called Rajanya) is one of the four varnas (social orders) of Hindu society and is associated with the warrior aristocracy. The Sanskrit term kṣatriyaḥ is used in the context of later Vedic society wherein members were organised into four classes: brahmin, kshatriya, vaishya, and shudra.

Rigveda
The administrative machinery in the Vedic India was headed by a tribal king called a Rajan whose position may or may not have been hereditary. The king may have been elected in a tribal assembly (called Samiti), which included women. The Rajan protected the tribe and cattle; was assisted by a priest; and did not maintain a standing army, though in the later period the rulership appears to have risen as a social class. The concept of the fourfold Varna system is not yet recorded.

Later Vedic period
The hymn Purusha Sukta to the Rigveda describes the symbolic creation of the four varna-s through cosmic sacrifice (yajña). Some scholars consider the Purusha Sukta to be a late interpolation into the Rigveda based on the neological character of the composition, as compared to the more archaic style of the Vedic literature. Since not all Indians were fully regulated under the varna in the Vedic society, the Purusha Sukta was supposedly composed in order to secure Vedic sanction for the heredity caste scheme. An alternate explanation is that the word 'Shudra' does not occur anywhere else in the Rig-veda except the Purusha Sukta, leading some scholars to believe the Purusha Sukta was a composition of the later Rig-vedic period itself to denote, legitimize and sanctify an oppressive and exploitative class structure that had already come into existence.

Although the Purusha Sukta uses the term rajanya, not Kshatriya, it is considered the first instance in the extant Vedic texts where four social classes are mentioned for the first time together. Usage of the term Rajanya possibly indicates the 'kinsmen of the Rajan' (i.e., kinsmen of the ruler) had emerged as a distinct social group then, such that by the end of the Vedic period, the term rajanya was replaced by Kshatriya; where rajanya stresses kinship with the Rajan and Kshatriya denotes power over a specific domain. The term rajanya unlike the word Kshatriya essentially denoted the status within a lineage. Whereas Kshatra, means "ruling; one of the ruling order". Jaiswal points out the term Brahman rarely occurs in the Rig-veda with the exception of the Purusha Sukta and may not have been used for the priestly class. Based on the authority of Pāṇini, Patanjali, Kātyāyana and the Mahabharata, Jayaswal believes that Rajanya was the name of political people and that the Rajanyas were, therefore, a democracy (with an elected ruler). Some examples were the Andhaka and Vrsni Rajanyas who followed the system of elected rulers. Ram Sharan Sharma details how the central chief was elected by various clan chiefs or lineage chiefs with increasing polarisation between the rajanya (aristocracy helping the ruler) and the vis (peasants) leading to a distinction between the chiefs as a separate class (raja, rajanya, kshatra, kshatriya) on one hand and vis (clan peasantry) on the other hand.

The term kshatriya comes from kshatra and implies temporal authority and power which was based less on being a successful leader in battle and more on the tangible power of laying claim to sovereignty over a territory, and symbolising ownership over clan lands. This later gave rise to the idea of kingship.

In the period of the Brahmanas (800 BCE to 700 BCE) there was ambiguity in the position of the varna. In the Panchavimsha Brahmana (13,4,7), the Rajanya are placed first, followed by Brahmana then Vaishya. In Shatapatha Brahmana 13.8.3.11, the Rajanya are placed second. In Shatapatha Brahmana 1.1.4.12 the order is—Brahmana, Vaishya, Rajanya, Shudra. The order of the Brahmanical tradition—Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra—became fixed from the time of dharmasutras (450 BCE to 100 BCE). The kshatriya were often considered pre-eminent in Buddhist circles. Even among Hindu societies they were sometimes at rivalry with the Brahmins, but they generally acknowledged the superiority of the priestly class. The Kshatriyas also began to question the yajnas of the historical Vedic religion, which led to religious ideas developed in the Upanishads.

Mahajanapadas
The gaṇa sangha form of government was an oligarchic republic during the period of the Mahajanapadas (c. 600–300 BCE), that was ruled by Kshatriya clans. However, these kshatriyas did not follow the Vedic religion, and were sometimes called degenerate Kshatriyas or Shudras by Brahmanical sources. The kshatriyas served as representatives in the assembly at the capital, debated various issues put before the assembly. Due to the lack of patronage of Vedic Brahmanism, the kshatriyas of the gana sanghas were often patrons of Buddhism and Jainism. In the Pali canon, Kshatriya is referred as khattiya.

In the kingdoms of the Mahajanapadas, the king claimed kshatriya status through the Vedic religion. While kings claimed to be kshatriya, some kings came from non-kshatriya origins.

Nanda Empire
After the Mahajanapada period, most of the prominent royal dynasties in northern India were not kshatriyas.

The Nanda Empire, whose rulers were stated to be shudras (barbers), killed many khatriya people and destroyed many kshatriya lineages.

Mauryan Kshatriyas
During Maurya empire, first king Chandragupta Maurya was kshatriya, who ruled from 324 BCE to 297 BCE. Most Buddhist text believed that he was kshatriya.

Post-Mauryan Kshatriyas
After the collapse of the Maurya Empire, numerous clan-based polities in Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan claimed kshatriya status.

The Shakas and Yavanas were considered to be low-status kshatriyas by Brahmin authors.

In the third to fourth centuries CE, kingdoms in the Krishna and Godavari rivers claimed kshatriya status and performed Vedic rituals to legitimate themselves as rulers. During his visit to India in the 7th century, Hieun Tsang noted that kshatriya rulers were ruling the kingdoms like Kabul, Kosala, Bhillamala, Maharashtra and Vallabhi.

Emergence of "Puranic" Kshatriyas
In the era from 300 to 700 CE, new royal dynasties were bestowed kshatriya status by Brahmins by linking them to the kshatriyas of the epics and Puranas. Dynasties began affiliating themselves with the Solar and Lunar dynasties and this gave them legitimation as rulers. In return the newly christened kshatriyas would patronize and reward the Brahmins. The Sanskritic culture of the kshatriyas of this period was heavily influential for later periods and set the style that kshatriyas of later periods appealed to. This process took place both in North India and the Deccan.

Modern era
Writing in the context of how the jajmani system operated in the 1960s, Pauline Kolenda noted that the "caste function of the Kshatriya is to lead and protect the village, and with conquest to manage their conquered lands. The Kshatriyas do perform these functions today to the extent possible, by distributing food as payments to kamins and providing leadership."

A number of castes in the modern era began claiming the Kshatriya origin.

Symbols
In rituals, the nyagrodha (Ficus indica or India fig or banyan tree) danda, or staff, is assigned to the kshatriya class, along with a mantra, intended to impart physical vitality or 'ojas'.

Lineage
Vedas do not mention kshatriya (or varna) of any vamsha (lineage).

The lineages of the Itihasa-Purana tradition are: the Solar dynasty (Suryavamsha); and the Lunar dynasty(Chandrakala/Somavamsha).

There are other lineages, such as Agnivanshi ("fire lineage"), in which an eponymous ancestor is claimed from Agni (fire), and Nagavanshi (snake-born), claiming descent from the Nāgas, whose description can be found in scriptures such as Mahabharata.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Kshatriya


text:
The Myth of Mental Illness

The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct is a 1961 book by the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, in which the author criticizes psychiatry and argues against the concept of mental illness. It received much publicity, and has become a classic, well known as an argument that "mentally ill" is a label which psychiatrists have used against people "disabled by living" rather than truly having a disease.

Background
Szasz writes that he became interested in writing The Myth of Mental Illness in approximately 1950, when, having become established as a psychiatrist, he became convinced that the concept of mental illness was vague and unsatisfactory. He began work on the book in 1954, when he was relieved of the burdens of a full-time psychiatric practice by being called to active duty in the navy. Later in the 1950s, it was rejected by the first publisher to whom Szasz submitted the manuscript. Szasz next sent the manuscript to Paul Hoeber, director of the medical division of Harper & Brothers, who arranged for it to be published.

Summary
Szasz argues that it does not make sense to classify psychological problems as diseases or illnesses, and that speaking of "mental illness" involves a logical or conceptual error. In his view, the term "mental illness" is an inappropriate metaphor and there are no true illnesses of the mind. His position has been characterized as involving a rigid distinction between the physical and the mental.

The legitimacy of psychiatry is questioned by Szasz, who compares it to alchemy and astrology, and argues that it offends the values of autonomy and liberty. Szasz believes that the concept of mental illness is not only logically absurd but has harmful consequences: instead of treating cases of ethical or legal deviation as occasions when a person should be taught personal responsibility, attempts are made to "cure" the deviants, for example by giving them tranquilizers. Psychotherapy is regarded by Szasz as useful not to help people recover from illnesses, but to help them "learn about themselves, others, and life." Discussing Jean-Martin Charcot and hysteria, Szasz argues that hysteria is an emotional problem and that Charcot's patients were not really ill.

Reception
The Myth of Mental Illness received much publicity, quickly became a classic, and made Szasz a prominent figure. The book was reviewed in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Psychosomatic Medicine, Archives of General Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology Review, and Psychologies. Published at a vulnerable moment for psychiatry, when Freudian theorizing was just beginning to fall out of favor and the field was trying to become more medically oriented and empirically based, the book provided an intellectual foundation for mental patient advocates and anti-psychiatry activists. It became well known in the mental health professions and was favorably received by those skeptical of modern psychiatry, but placed Szasz in conflict with many doctors. Soon after The Myth of Mental Illness was published, the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene demanded, in a letter citing the book, that Szasz be dismissed from his university position because he did not accept the concept of mental illness.

The philosopher Karl Popper, in a 1961 letter to Szasz, called the book admirable and fascinating, adding that, "It is a most important book, and it marks a real revolution." The psychiatrist David Cooper wrote that The Myth of Mental Illness, like the psychiatrist R. D. Laing's The Divided Self (1960), "proved stimulating in the development of [anti-psychiatry]", though he noted that neither book is itself an anti-psychiatric work. He described Szasz's work as "a decisive, carefully documented demystification of psychiatric diagnostic labelling in general." Socialist author Peter Sedgwick, writing in 1982, commented that in The Myth of Mental Illness, Szasz expounded a "game-playing model of social interaction" which is "zestful and insightful" but "neither particularly uncommon nor particularly iconoclastic by the standards of recent social-psychological theorising." Sedgwick argued that many of Szasz's observations are valuable regardless of the validity of Szasz's rejection of the concept of mental illness, and could easily be accepted by psychotherapists. Although agreeing with Szasz that the assignation of mental illness could undermine individual responsibility, he noted that this did not constitute an objection to the concept itself.

The philosopher Michael Ruse called Szasz the most forceful proponent of the thesis that mental illness is a myth. However, while sympathetic to Szasz, he considered his case over-stated. Ruse criticized Szasz's arguments on several grounds, maintaining that while the concepts of disease and illness were originally applied only to the physiological realm, they can properly be extended to the mind, and there is no logical absurdity involved in doing so. Kenneth Lewes wrote that The Myth of Mental Illness is the most notable example of the "critique of the institutions of psychiatry and psychoanalysis" that occurred as part of the "general upheaval of values in the 1960s", though he saw the work as less profound than Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization (1961).

The psychiatrist Peter Breggin called The Myth of Mental Illness a seminal work. The author Richard Webster described the book as a well known argument against the tendency of psychiatrists to label people who are "disabled by living" as mentally ill. He observed that while some of Szasz's arguments are similar to his, he disagreed with Szasz's view that hysteria was an emotional problem and that Charcot's patients were not genuinely mentally ill. The lawyer Linda Hirshman wrote that while few psychiatrists adopted the views Szasz expounded in The Myth of Mental Illness, the book helped to encourage a revision of their diagnostic and therapeutic claims. The historian Lillian Faderman called the book the most notable attack on psychiatry published in the 1960s, adding that "Szasz's insights and critiques would prove invaluable to the homophile movement."

title: The Myth of Mental Illness


text:
Wimshurst machine

The Wimshurst machine or Wimshurst influence machine is an electrostatic generator, a machine for generating high voltages developed between 1880 and 1883 by British inventor James Wimshurst (1832–1903).

It has a distinctive appearance with two large contra-rotating discs mounted in a vertical plane, two crossed bars with metallic brushes, and a spark gap formed by two metal spheres.

Description
These machines belong to a class of electrostatic generators called influence machines, which separate electric charges through electrostatic induction, or influence, not depending on friction for their operation. Earlier machines in this class were developed by Wilhelm Holtz (1865 and 1867), August Toepler (1865), J. Robert Voss (1880), and others. The older machines are less efficient and exhibit an unpredictable tendency to switch their polarity, while the Wimshurst machine has neither defect.

In a Wimshurst machine, the two insulated discs and their metal sectors rotate in opposite directions passing the crossed metal neutralizer bars and their brushes. An imbalance of charges is induced, amplified, and collected by two pairs of metal combs with points placed near the surfaces of each disc. These collectors are mounted on insulating supports and connected to the output terminals. The positive feedback increases the accumulating charges exponentially until the dielectric breakdown voltage of the air is reached and an electric spark jumps across the gap.

The machine is theoretically not self-starting, meaning that if none of the sectors on the discs has any electrical charge, there is nothing to induce charges on other sectors. In practice, even a small residual charge on any sector is enough to start the process going once the discs start to rotate. The machine will work satisfactorily only in a dry atmosphere. It requires mechanical power to turn the disks against the electric field, and it is this energy that the machine converts into the electric power of the spark. The steady-state output of the Wimshurst machine is a direct (non-alternating) current that is proportional to the area covered by the metal sector, the rotation speed, and a complicated function of the initial charge distribution. The insulation and size of the machine determine the maximal output voltage that can be reached. The accumulated spark energy can be increased by adding a pair of Leyden jars, an early type of capacitor suitable for high voltages, with the jars’ inner plates independently connected to each of the output terminals and the jars’ outer plates interconnected. A typical Wimshurst machine can produce sparks that are about a third of the disc's diameter in length and several tens of microamperes.

The available voltage gain can be understood by noting that the charge density on oppositely charged sectors, between the neutralizer bars, is nearly uniform across the sectors, and thus at low voltage, while the charge density on same charged sectors, approaching the collector combs, peaks near the sector edges, at a consequently high voltage relative to the opposite collector combs.

Wimshurst machines were used during the 19th century in physics research. They were also occasionally used to generate high voltage to power the first-generation Crookes X-ray tubes during the first two decades of the 20th century, although Holtz machines and induction coils were more commonly used. Today they are used only in science museums and education to demonstrate the principles of electrostatics.

Operation
The two contra-rotating insulating discs (usually made of glass) have a number of metal sectors stuck onto them. The machine is provided with four small brushes (two on each side of the machine on conducting shafts at 90° to each other), plus a pair of charge-collection combs. The conducting shafts, that hold the brushes on a typical Wimshurst machine, would form the shape of an "X", if one could see through the insulating discs, as they are perpendicular to each other. The charge-collection combs are typically mounted along the horizontal and equally contact the outer edges of both front and back discs. The collection combs on each side are usually connected to respective Leyden jars.

Any small charge on either of the two discs suffices to begin the charging process. Suppose, therefore, that the back disc has a small, net electrostatic charge. For concreteness, assume this charge is positive (red) and that the back disc ([A] lower chain) rotates counter-clockwise (right to left). As the charged sector (moving red square) rotates to the position of the brush ([Y] down arrow tip) next to front disc ([B] upper chain near center), it induces a polarization of charge on the conducting shaft ([Y-Y1] upper horizontal black line) holding the brush, attracting negative (green) charge to the near side ([Y] upper square becoming green), so that positive (red) charge accumulates on the far side (across the disc, 180 degrees away) ([Y1] upper square becoming red). The shaft's polarized charges attach to the nearest sectors on disc B, resulting in negative charge on B [Y] closer to the original positive charge on A, and positive charge on the opposite side of B [Y1]. After an additional 45° rotation ([Z] near lower chain middle), the positive (red) charge on A (lower chain) is repelled by a positive (red) charge on B ([Z] upper chain) approaching. The first collection comb ([Z] arrow-tipped lines to triangles) encountered allows both positive (red) charges to leave the sectors neutral (squares becoming black), and accumulate in the Leyden jar anode (red triangle) attracted to the Leyden jar cathode (green triangle). The charge completes the cycle across the discs when a spark (yellow zigzag) discharges the Leyden jar (red and green triangles).

As B rotates 90° clockwise (left to right), the charges that have been induced on it line up with the brushes next to disc A [X, X1]. The charges on B induce the opposite polarization of the A-brushes' shaft, and the shaft's polarization is transferred to its disc. Disc B keeps rotating and its charges are accumulated by the nearest charge-collection combs.

Disc A rotates 90° so that its charges line up with the brush of disc B [Y, Y1], where an opposite charge-polarization is induced on the B conducting shaft and the nearest sectors of B, similar to the description two paragraphs above.

The process repeats, with each charge polarization on A inducing polarization on B, inducing polarization on A, etc. The "influence" of neighboring attractive sectors induces exponentially larger charges, until balanced by the conducting shaft's finite capacitance. All of these induced positive and negative charges are collected by combs to charge the Leyden jars, electrical charge-storage devices similar to capacitors. The mechanical energy required to separate the opposing charges on the adjacent sectors provides the energy source for the electrical output.

title: Wimshurst machine


text:
Yucca brevifolia

Yucca brevifolia (also known as the Joshua tree, yucca palm, tree yucca, and palm tree yucca) is a plant species belonging to the genus Yucca. It is tree-like in habit, which is reflected in its common names.

This monocotyledonous tree is native to the arid Southwestern United States, specifically California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, and northwestern Mexico. It is confined mostly to the Mojave Desert between 400 and 1,800 m elevation. It thrives in the open grasslands of Queen Valley and Lost Horse Valley in Joshua Tree National Park. Other regions with large populations of the tree can be found northeast of Kingman, Arizona, in Mohave County; and along U.S. 93 between the towns of Wickenburg and Wikieup, a route which has been designated the Joshua Tree Parkway of Arizona. The trees are abundant in Saddleback Butte State Park 85 mi north of Downtown Los Angeles in Los Angeles County's Antelope Valley. The common name Joshua tree apparently comes from Christian iconography.

Taxonomy
The Joshua tree is called "hunuvat chiy'a" or "humwichawa" by the Indigenous Cahuilla. It is also called izote de desierto (Spanish, "desert dagger"). It was first formally described in the botanical literature as Yucca brevifolia by George Engelmann in 1871 as part of the Geological Exploration of the 100th meridian (or "Wheeler Survey").

The name "Joshua tree" is commonly said to have been given by a group of Mormon settlers crossing the Mojave Desert in the mid-19th century: The tree's role in guiding them through the desert combined with its unique shape reminded them of a biblical story in which Joshua keeps his hands reached out for an extended period of time to enable the Israelites in their conquest of Canaan. Further, the shaggy leaves may have provided the appearance of a beard. However, no direct or contemporary attestation of this origin exists, and the name Joshua tree is not recorded until after Mormon contact; moreover, the physical appearance of the Joshua tree more closely resembles a similar story told of Moses.

Ranchers and miners who were contemporaneous with the Mormon immigrants used the trunks and branches as fencing and for fuel for ore-processing steam engines.

In addition to the autonymic subspecies Y. b. subsp. brevifolia, two other subspecies have been described: Y. b. subsp. herbertii (Webber's yucca or Herbert Joshua tree) and Y. b. subsp. jaegeriana (the Jaeger Joshua tree or Jaeger's Joshua tree or pygmae yucca), though both are sometimes treated as varieties or forms. Y.b. subsp. jaegeriana has also been treated as its own species.

Growth and development

Joshua trees grow quickly for a desert species; new seedlings may grow at an average rate of 7.6 cm per year in their first 10 years, then only about 3.8 cm per year. The trunk consists of thousands of small fibers and lacks annual growth rings, making determining the tree's age difficult. This tree has a top-heavy branch system, and a broad root system, with roots in one case found 11 m from the nearest Joshua tree. If it survives the rigors of the desert, it can live for several hundred years. The tallest trees reach about 15 m. New plants can grow from seed, but in some populations, new stems grow from underground rhizomes that spread out around the parent tree.

The evergreen leaves are dark green, linear, bayonet-shaped, 15–35 cm long, and 7–15 mm broad at the base, tapering to a sharp point; they are borne in a dense spiral arrangement at the apex of the stems. The leaf margins are white and serrated.

Flowers typically appear from February to late April, in panicles 30–55 cm tall and 30–38 cm broad, the individual flowers erect, 4–7 cm tall, with six creamy white to green tepals. The tepals are lanceolate and are fused to the middle. The fused pistils are 3 cm tall and the stigma cavity is surrounded by lobes. The semi-fleshy fruit that is produced is green-brown, elliptical, and contains many flat seeds. Joshua trees usually do not branch until after they bloom (though branching may also occur if the growing tip is destroyed by the yucca-boring weevil), and they do not bloom every year. Like most desert plants, their blooming depends on rainfall at the proper time. They also need a winter freeze before they bloom.

Once they bloom, the flowers are pollinated by the yucca moth (Tegeticula synthetica), which spreads pollen while laying eggs inside the flower. The larvae feed on the seeds, but enough seeds remain to reproduce. The Joshua tree is also able to actively abort ovaries in which too many eggs have been produced.

Distribution and habitat

The Joshua tree is native to the southwestern United States (Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah) and northwestern Mexico. This range mostly coincides with the geographical reach of the Mojave Desert, where it is considered one of the major indicator species for the desert. It occurs at elevations between 400 and 1,800 m.

Conservation status
Joshua trees are one of the species predicted to have their range reduced and shifted by climate change. Concern remains that they will be eliminated from Joshua Tree National Park, with ecological research suggesting a high probability that their populations will be reduced by 90% of their current range by the end of the 21st century,  thus fundamentally transforming the ecosystem of the park. Wildfires, invasive grasses and poor migration patterns for the trees' seeds are all additional factors in the species' imperilment. As an example, approximately 13%—or more than 1.3 million Joshua trees—in one of the densest Joshua tree populations in the world in Mojave National Preserve were killed in the Dome Fire in August 2020. Also, concern exists about the ability of the species to migrate to favorable climates due to the extinction of the giant Shasta ground sloth (Nothrotheriops shastensis) 13,000 years ago; ground sloth dung has been found to contain Joshua tree leaves, fruits, and seeds, suggesting that the sloths might have been key to the trees' dispersal. However, ground squirrels are very effective at moving the seeds long distances.

In March 2022, California Department of Fish and Wildlife conducted a status review of the Western Joshua Tree to determine whether to list the species as threatened under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA). The study showed that the largest threat to Yucca brevifolia was wildfires, that wildfires were a threat to population density of prone areas but not to the limits of the range itself, that several population studies showed Yucca brevifolia was abundant, and that although the southern region of the species' range has been reduced, the trend is that the northern region has been expanding over the last 11,700 years as the North American ice cap melted, allowing the species to occupy its current range. The studies showing reduced population after fires used aerial photography to document populations which would underreport smaller and thus younger trees, as was noted in the review. The review concluded: "Based on the criteria described above, the best scientific information available to the Department at this time indicates that western Joshua tree is not in serious danger of becoming extinct throughout all, or a significant portion, of its range due to one or more causes, including loss of habitat, change in habitat, overexploitation, predation, competition, or disease, and is not likely to become an endangered species in the foreseeable future in the absence of special protection and management efforts required by CESA."

In February 2023, California governor Gavin Newsom's administration proposed a budget trailer bill The Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act to focus on protecting the climate-threatened species and permitting development in the Southern California desert. The proposed legislation calls for a conservation plan for this and other species, that may be threatened by climate change by 2024 and would authorize the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to permit taking a western Joshua tree only under certain conditions. The legislation requires a fee of up to $2500 for the removal, relocation or trimming of limbs of a Western Joshua tree, including dead trees and limbs.

This bill was passed by California lawmakers in June 2023 and went into effect on July 10, 2023.

Uses and cultivation
Different forms of the species are cultivated, including smaller plants native from the eastern part of the species range. These smaller plants grow 2.5 m tall and branch when about 1 m tall. Red-shafted flickers make nests in the branches, which are later used by other birds.

Prior to the twentieth century, Native Americans of the Mojave and western Sonoran Desert routinely used several parts of the Joshua tree as food and fiber (Cornett, J.W., 2018, Indian Uses of Desert Plants, Nature Trails Press, Palm Springs, CA). Leaf fibers were occasionally used to bind and manufacture sandals. Root sheaths were woven into baskets to add reddish-brown designs. Fruits were baked or boiled then eaten. Seeds were ground into flour and mixed with flour from other plant species. The flour was moistened with water and the resulting paste was kneaded into cakes and dried.

title: Yucca brevifolia


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Sora, Lazio

Sora is a town and comune of Lazio, Italy, in the province of Frosinone. It is built in a plain on the banks of the Liri. This part of the valley is the seat of some important manufacturing, especially of paper mills. The area around Sora is famous for the costumes of its peasants.

History
Sora, an ancient Volscian town, was thrice captured by the Romans, in 345, 314, and 305 BCE, before they managed, in 303, by means of a colony 4,000 strong, to confirm its annexation as a Latin colony. In 209, it was one of the colonies that refused further contributions to the war against Hannibal. By the lex Julia, it became a municipium, but under Augustus, it was colonized by soldiers of the legio IV Sorana, which had been mainly enrolled there. It belonged technically to Latium adiectum. Located in the Ducatus Romanus under the authority of the pope during the early Dark Ages, it was captured by the Lombards of Gisulf I of Benevento in 705.

The castle of Sorella, built on the rocky height above the town, was in the Middle Ages a stronghold of some note. In 1229, during the War of the Keys, it submitted to the Papacy and was then sacked by the Emperor Frederick II, its inhabitants hanged. In 1443, King Alfonso of Naples made Sora the seat of an independent Duchy; it was afterwards seized by Pope Pius II, but being restored to the Cantelmi by Pope Sixtus IV, it ultimately passed to the duke Giovanni Della Rovere. Against Cesare Borgia, the city was heroically defended by Francesco Maria I Della Rovere. It was purchased by Pope Gregory XIII for 11,000 ducats and bestowed under the suzerainty of Gregory's son, Giacomo Boncompagni (who was the first duke of Sora of the family).

Geography
The distance from Sora to centre of Rome is 115 km; heading in the opposite direction, the downtown area of Naples is 138 km from Sora.

The municipality, located next to Abruzzo, borders with Arpino, Balsorano (AQ), Broccostella, Campoli Appennino, Castelliri, Isola del Liri, Monte San Giovanni Campano, Pescosolido, and Veroli.

Main sights
The original cathedral, consecrated by Pope Adrian IV in 1155, was destroyed by the earthquake of 1634.

Above the town on a precipitous rock, elevation 540 m, that guards the Liri's valley and the entrance to the Abruzzi are remains of polygonal walls; here, possibly, was the citadel of the original Volscian town. Also, remains of medieval fortifications are there.

Among the churches in town are the Sanctuary of the Madonna della Figura and San Silvestro Papa.

Notable people

 * Suranus
 * Caesar Baronius
 * Luca Brandolini
 * Ludovico Camangi
 * Vittorio Cristini
 * Alfredo De Gasperis
 * Vittorio De Sica
 * Enzo Di Pede
 * Tony Evangelista
 * Alessio Giustini
 * Filippo Iannone
 * Lucius Mummius
 * Stefano Pescosolido
 * Giulio Polerio
 * Quintus Valerius Soranus
 * Anna Tatangelo
 * Zappacosta
 * Davide Zappacosta
 * Mario Ferri

Twin towns

 * 🇨🇦 Vaughan, Canada
 * 🇫🇷 Athis-Mons, France

title: Sora, Lazio


text:
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Schengen Agreement

The Schengen Agreement is a treaty which led to the creation of Europe's Schengen Area, in which internal border checks have largely been abolished. It was signed on 14 June 1985, near the town of Schengen, Luxembourg, by five of the ten member states of the then European Economic Community. It proposed measures intended to gradually abolish border checks at the signatories' common borders, including reduced-speed vehicle checks which allowed vehicles to cross borders without stopping, allowing residents in border areas freedom to cross borders away from fixed checkpoints, and the harmonisation of visa policies.

In 1990, the Agreement was supplemented by the Schengen Convention which proposed the complete abolition of systematic internal border controls and a common visa policy. The Schengen Area operates very much like a single state for international travel purposes with external border controls for travellers entering and exiting the area, and common visas, but with no internal border controls. It currently consists of 29 European countries covering a population of over 400 million people and an area of 4,312,099 square kilometres (1,664,911 sq mi).

Originally, the Schengen treaties and the rules adopted under them operated independently from the European Union. However, in 1999 they were incorporated into European Union law by the Amsterdam Treaty, while providing opt-outs for the only two EU member states that had remained outside the Area: Ireland and the United Kingdom (which subsequently withdrew from the EU in 2020). Schengen is now a core part of EU law, and all EU member states without an opt-out which have not already joined the Schengen Area are legally obliged to do so when technical requirements have been met. Several non-EU countries are included in the area through special association agreements.

History
Free movement of people was a core part of the original Treaty of Rome and, from the early days of the European Economic Community, nationals of EEC member states could travel freely from one member state to another on production of their passports or national identity cards. However, systematic identity controls were still in place at the border between most member states.

Disagreement between member states led to an impasse on the abolition of border controls within the Community, but in 1985 five of the then ten member states – Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany – signed an agreement on the gradual abolition of common border controls. The agreement was signed on the Princess Marie-Astrid boat on the river Moselle near the town of Schengen, Luxembourg, where the territories of France, Germany and Luxembourg meet. Three of the signatories, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, had already abolished common border controls as part of the Benelux Economic Union.

The Schengen Agreement was signed independently of the European Union, in part owing to the lack of consensus amongst EU member states over whether or not the EU had the jurisdiction to abolish border controls, and in part because those ready to implement the idea did not wish to wait for others (at this time there was no enhanced co-operation mechanism). The Agreement provided for harmonisation of visa policies, allowing residents in border areas the freedom to cross borders away from fixed checkpoints, the replacement of passport checks with visual surveillance of vehicles at reduced speed, and vehicle checks that allowed vehicles to cross borders without stopping.

In 1990, the Agreement was supplemented by the Schengen Convention which proposed the abolition of internal border controls and a common visa policy. It was this Convention that created the Schengen Area through the complete abolition of border controls between Schengen member states, common rules on visas, and police and judicial cooperation.

The Schengen Agreement and its implementing Convention were enacted in 1995 only for some signatories, but just over two years later during the Amsterdam Intergovernmental Conference, all European Union member states except the United Kingdom and Ireland had signed the Agreement. It was during those negotiations, which led to the Amsterdam Treaty, that the incorporation of the Schengen acquis into the main body of European Union law was agreed along with opt-outs for Ireland and the United Kingdom (which subsequently withdrew from the EU in 2020), which were to remain outside of the Schengen Area.

In December 1996 two non-EU member states, Norway and Iceland, signed an association agreement with the signatories of the Agreement to become part of the Schengen Area. While this agreement never came into force, both countries did become part of the Schengen Area after concluding similar agreements with the EU. The Schengen Convention itself was not open for signature by non-EU member states. In 2009, Switzerland finalised its official entry to the Schengen Area with the acceptance of an association agreement by popular referendum in 2005.

Now that the Schengen Agreement is part of the acquis communautaire, it has, for EU members, lost the status of a treaty, which could only be amended according to its terms. Instead, amendments are made according to the legislative procedure of the EU under EU treaties. Ratification by the former agreement signatory states is not required for altering or repealing some or all of the former Schengen acquis. Legal acts setting out the conditions for entry into the Schengen Area are now made by majority vote in the EU's legislative bodies. New EU member states do not sign the Schengen Agreement as such, instead being bound to implement the Schengen rules as part of the pre-existing body of EU law, which every new entrant is required to accept.

This situation means that non-EU Schengen member states have few formally binding options to influence the shaping and evolution of Schengen rules; their options are effectively reduced to agreeing or withdrawing from the agreement. However, consultations with affected countries are conducted prior to the adoption of particular new legislation.

In 2016, border controls were temporarily reintroduced in seven Schengen countries (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Poland, and Sweden) in response to the European migrant crisis.

Portugal reintroduced checks several times along its border with Spain, during the UEFA Euro 2004 championships and when Portugal hosted the NATO 2010 Lisbon summit. Portugal also reintroduced border checks from 10 May 2017 to 14 May 2017, during Pope Francis's visit to Fátima, Portugal.

Border controls were reintroduced throughout the area during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On 8 December 2022 the Justice and Home Affairs Council voted to admit Croatia to the Schengen Area, but rejected Bulgaria and Romania. Austria and the Netherlands voted against the inclusion of Bulgaria and Romania, with Austria claiming that there had been a rapid increase in the number of migrants using the West Balkan route to enter the EU illegally. On 30 December 2023 the EU agreed to include Bulgaria and Romania in the Schengen Area, with Austria no longer vetoing the enlargement of the area. Air and sea ports no longer conduct border checks from 31 March 2024, while the end of land border checks require further discussions.

title: Schengen Agreement