Abstract

Studies of the Pacific gold rushes of the nineteenth century have generally approached them through the framework of nation-based history. This paper will use the case study of vigilante violence in San Francisco in 1851 to challenge this spatially confined view, revealing the importance of the California Gold Rush as a global event. It will focus on vigilante violence as a method of imposing Anglo-American, middle class social control on an unruly, unstable, and crucially, cosmopolitan population. It will shed light on the justifications of violence to highlight how it was just one element of a comprehensive strategy for establishing a particular Anglo vision of American society in an environment that had thrown many Anglo-American certainties into doubt.