Richard White. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
This book is the history of a time and place that, while bounded geographically and temporally as indicated in the subtitle, was also defined by a complex web of social, cultural, political, and economic relationships between Indian and European societies which met in this "middle ground".
The author refers to it as a "circular story" (ix) in which Indians and whites began the period regarding each other as strange, alien "others" to be regarded from a distance; in the end, the triumphant Americans would re-impose this perception on the former middle ground, but in the intervening decades, there had been a complex world of ever-shifting negotiation and compromise. The Middle Ground could be--and often was--a dangerous and violent place, but it was also a place in which accommodation and compromise were possible.
White often refers to the region by the name given by early French explorers and colonists: the pays d'en haut. This is appropriate, as the relationship between French and Algonquian established much of the initial template for the middle ground; later generations of Indians would often look back to the era in which the "French Fathers" had been the primary Euro-American power with nostalgia and longing. The initial alliance that French and Indian individuals and groups painstakingly negotiated had a lasting effect on the history of subsequent Spanish, British, and American involvement in the region.
This book covers a long time period across a wide area, and while White's analysis pays a great deal of attention to the ambiguity and shifting realities of the topic, the book itself is largely structured in a straightforwardly chronological framework. This is welcome, as a more thematic approach would have lost any narrative connection, as White deliberately leaves the center of most commonly-studied events of the period (particularly the wars: French-Indian; American Revolution; and the War of 1812) off-stage. He locates the center of his story firmly within the pays d'en haut.
This book is a valuable study of Indian'white relations and Indian history, but it also adds a new dimension to the study of colonial and Early American history. This is a view from what most standard American histories of the era consider the hinterlands or the "back country." As White explains, most students of American history know how this story ends--with the new nation committed to rigid racial hierarchies, and a complete dispossession of the western Indians. But that history was not inevitable, nor was it the logical consequence of what preceded it. White restores the history of a world that was lost when America "conquered" the West.
Monday, December 28, 2015
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Slave Country
Adam Rothman. Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
After achieving independence, the United States acquired sovereignty over a vast area west of the Appalachians and the original colonies-turned-States. The spread of chattel slavery to the southern half of this domain--and beyond, after the acquisition of the Louisiana territory--was anything but preordained; the story of how this happened, specifically in the Deep South (defined here as the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama) between the 1780's and 1820 is covered ably in this book.
As Rothman points out in the Introduction, the institution of slavery came with the new nation as a heritage of the colonial period, but that does not explain why it survived and in fact expanded in the first several decades of independence. The United States was a Republic, born of a revolution formerly committed to ideals of liberty and equality. The tension between the rhetoric of the Revolution on the one hand, and the reality of race-based slavery on the other, had troubled many Americans, and had led to the gradual decline of the institution in the North. Yet, within a few decades, the newly established states of the Deep South were firmly committed to plantation slavery as the foundation of their economies, and the source of much of their political and social elite.
None of this, again, was inevitable; in the Preface Rothman states "Slavery's expansion in the Deep South emerged from contingent global forces, concrete policies pursued by governments, and countless small choices made by thousands of individuals in diverse stations of life."(xi)
The original vision for how the lands of the West should be settled was articulated by Thomas Jefferson, who envisioned a peaceful, agrarian settling of the vast American interior by good Republican--white--farm families. He also believed, or at least hoped, that somehow the spread of Americans westward across the North American continent would somehow diffuse slavery to the point where it would disappear as an institution and a moral problem. There were two problems with this vision; to begin with, it ignored powerful economic incentives which would encourage the continuation and expansion of slavery, and it failed to account for what would happen to slaves themselves once the institution somehow organically died off. Jefferson's vision had no place for black people. This fact would heavily mitigate any meaningful move toward widespread emancipation in the spreading "slave country".
Furthermore, the spread of settlement into these new lands created conflicts with neighboring colonial powers as well as Indian nations and existing inhabitants. The incorporation of Louisiana into the American polity was problematic, as the city of New Orleans in particular was both very cosmopolitan and had a very different social and racial caste system than the roughly binary white-vs.-black racial hierarchy that was forming in the increasingly democratic (white) Republic of Jeffersonian America. Conflict was inevitable; the Jeffersonian vision could not last contact with the complex realities on the ground.
What followed was a period marked by both demographic growth and economic expansion on one hand, and violence and discord on the other. Cotton and sugar boomed as commodities, and a flood of voracious new settlers--particularly the well-off who could use money and connections to acquire the best land, first--moved in to turn more and more of the region into productive plantation land, worked by an ever-increasing population of enslaved people. At the same time, Indian wars, slave resistance (including the largest single slave revolt in US history, in 1811), and the War of 1812 all contributed to the process of destabilizing the old order and violently clearing the way for the growth and spread of a new slave-based social and economic order.
By the end of the period, the Deep South had emerged as the heart of what was becoming the "Slave Power". There would be further conflict and war ahead, but when the book concludes, the creators of the Deep South could convince themselves that they were the bulwark of a new order which would, in fact, hold it's own for several decades.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
After achieving independence, the United States acquired sovereignty over a vast area west of the Appalachians and the original colonies-turned-States. The spread of chattel slavery to the southern half of this domain--and beyond, after the acquisition of the Louisiana territory--was anything but preordained; the story of how this happened, specifically in the Deep South (defined here as the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama) between the 1780's and 1820 is covered ably in this book.
As Rothman points out in the Introduction, the institution of slavery came with the new nation as a heritage of the colonial period, but that does not explain why it survived and in fact expanded in the first several decades of independence. The United States was a Republic, born of a revolution formerly committed to ideals of liberty and equality. The tension between the rhetoric of the Revolution on the one hand, and the reality of race-based slavery on the other, had troubled many Americans, and had led to the gradual decline of the institution in the North. Yet, within a few decades, the newly established states of the Deep South were firmly committed to plantation slavery as the foundation of their economies, and the source of much of their political and social elite.
None of this, again, was inevitable; in the Preface Rothman states "Slavery's expansion in the Deep South emerged from contingent global forces, concrete policies pursued by governments, and countless small choices made by thousands of individuals in diverse stations of life."(xi)
The original vision for how the lands of the West should be settled was articulated by Thomas Jefferson, who envisioned a peaceful, agrarian settling of the vast American interior by good Republican--white--farm families. He also believed, or at least hoped, that somehow the spread of Americans westward across the North American continent would somehow diffuse slavery to the point where it would disappear as an institution and a moral problem. There were two problems with this vision; to begin with, it ignored powerful economic incentives which would encourage the continuation and expansion of slavery, and it failed to account for what would happen to slaves themselves once the institution somehow organically died off. Jefferson's vision had no place for black people. This fact would heavily mitigate any meaningful move toward widespread emancipation in the spreading "slave country".
Furthermore, the spread of settlement into these new lands created conflicts with neighboring colonial powers as well as Indian nations and existing inhabitants. The incorporation of Louisiana into the American polity was problematic, as the city of New Orleans in particular was both very cosmopolitan and had a very different social and racial caste system than the roughly binary white-vs.-black racial hierarchy that was forming in the increasingly democratic (white) Republic of Jeffersonian America. Conflict was inevitable; the Jeffersonian vision could not last contact with the complex realities on the ground.
What followed was a period marked by both demographic growth and economic expansion on one hand, and violence and discord on the other. Cotton and sugar boomed as commodities, and a flood of voracious new settlers--particularly the well-off who could use money and connections to acquire the best land, first--moved in to turn more and more of the region into productive plantation land, worked by an ever-increasing population of enslaved people. At the same time, Indian wars, slave resistance (including the largest single slave revolt in US history, in 1811), and the War of 1812 all contributed to the process of destabilizing the old order and violently clearing the way for the growth and spread of a new slave-based social and economic order.
By the end of the period, the Deep South had emerged as the heart of what was becoming the "Slave Power". There would be further conflict and war ahead, but when the book concludes, the creators of the Deep South could convince themselves that they were the bulwark of a new order which would, in fact, hold it's own for several decades.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
Encountering Revolution
Ashli White. Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic.
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
Ashli White extends the notion of Atlantic History to the Haitian Revolution--but while that perspective (rightly) puts that event into the larger context of the French and American Revolutions, White has a narrower focus--the effect that refugees from the ongoing Haitian conflict had on the new American republic.
The United States received thousands of refugees from Haiti during a period extending, intermittently, over nearly two decades. They consisted of three main groups: whites, free men of color, and enslaved blacks. Although Haiti was a plantation economy, the slaves who came were overwhelmingly the personal servants of the white refugees, or were skilled tradesmen. The exiles collectively challenged Americans nascent sense of nationhood--as a Republic (the exiles were often refugees from the pro-Republican island regime earlier in the conflict), and as a slave-holding Republic.
White traces this rather tightly-circumscribed story well. The presence of Haitian exiles posed an existential challenge to Americans' understanding of themselves--for white Americans, the plight of the white exiles created a tension between the American commitment to trans-national Republicanism, and a race-based slavery system. For black Americans, the Haitian Revolution provided a tangible example of how the language of liberty and revolution was universal.
Ultimately, white America chose race over universal Republicanism. The experience of accepting and assimilating the Haitian refugees resonated for decades, and profoundly influenced the development of early American nationalism.
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
Ashli White extends the notion of Atlantic History to the Haitian Revolution--but while that perspective (rightly) puts that event into the larger context of the French and American Revolutions, White has a narrower focus--the effect that refugees from the ongoing Haitian conflict had on the new American republic.
The United States received thousands of refugees from Haiti during a period extending, intermittently, over nearly two decades. They consisted of three main groups: whites, free men of color, and enslaved blacks. Although Haiti was a plantation economy, the slaves who came were overwhelmingly the personal servants of the white refugees, or were skilled tradesmen. The exiles collectively challenged Americans nascent sense of nationhood--as a Republic (the exiles were often refugees from the pro-Republican island regime earlier in the conflict), and as a slave-holding Republic.
White traces this rather tightly-circumscribed story well. The presence of Haitian exiles posed an existential challenge to Americans' understanding of themselves--for white Americans, the plight of the white exiles created a tension between the American commitment to trans-national Republicanism, and a race-based slavery system. For black Americans, the Haitian Revolution provided a tangible example of how the language of liberty and revolution was universal.
Ultimately, white America chose race over universal Republicanism. The experience of accepting and assimilating the Haitian refugees resonated for decades, and profoundly influenced the development of early American nationalism.
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