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America's Hundred Years' War: U.S. Expansion to the Gulf Coast and the Fate of the Seminole, 17631858

William S. Belko (ed.)

Conventional history narratives tell us that in the early years of the Republic, the United States fought three wars against the Seminole Indians and two against the Creeks. However, this book argues ... More

Conventional history narratives tell us that in the early years of the Republic, the United States fought three wars against the Seminole Indians and two against the Creeks. However, this book argues that we would do better to view these events as moments of heightened military aggression punctuating a much longer period of conflict in the Gulf Coast region. Featuring chapters on topics ranging from international diplomacy to Seminole military strategy, the volume urges us to reconsider the reasons for and impact of early U.S. territorial expansion. It highlights the actions and motivations of Indians and African Americans during the period and establishes the groundwork for research that is more balanced and looks beyond the hopes and dreams of whites.Less

Borderland Narratives: Negotiation and Accommodation in North America's Contested Spaces, 1500-1850

Andrew K. Frank and A. Glenn Crothers (eds)

This collection of original essays extends the concept of boderlands—as both a process and place—to geographic places and topics not usually considered in this realm. This includes African slavery, ... More

This collection of original essays extends the concept of boderlands—as both a process and place—to geographic places and topics not usually considered in this realm. This includes African slavery, missionaries, the Ohio Valley, and other non-Spanish regions. Positioning these regions and topics as comparable to other early North American crossroads and meeting places highlights how the mingling of people and cultures shaped North America’s history before 1850. Equally important, it helps illuminate scholars’s growing focus on the process of borderland formation across a variety of North American regions. Collectively, the essays in this volume reveal how the field is currently unfolding and urge scholars to abandon the geographic determinism of the first definition. The southwestern United States-Mexico border remains an ideal locale to employ the concept as a metaphor and as an intellectual tool, but this volume reveals the merits of employing borderlands to create more nuanced narratives of the intersection of people and ideas in the Ohio Valley and elsewhere in early North America.Less

Colonial Georgia and the Creeks: Anglo-Indian Diplomacy on the Southern Frontier, 17331763

John T. Juricek

This detailed account of interactions between the English and the Creek Indians in colonial Georgia, from the founding until 1763, describes how colonists and the Creeks negotiated with each other, ... More

This detailed account of interactions between the English and the Creek Indians in colonial Georgia, from the founding until 1763, describes how colonists and the Creeks negotiated with each other, especially over land issues. The research reveals the clashes between the groups, their efforts to manipulate one another, and how they reached a series of unstable compromises. European and North American Indian nations had different understandings of “national” territory. In Georgia, this led to a bitter conflict that lasted more than a decade and threatened to destroy the colony. Unlike previous accounts of James Oglethorpe's diplomacy, the book reveals how his serious blunders led directly to colonial Georgia's greatest crisis. In the end, an ingenious and complicated compromise arranged by Governor Henry Ellis resolved the situation, mainly in favor of the English. By focusing on the land issues that structured the treaties, this book tells a cross-cultural story of deal-making and deal-breaking, both public and private.Less

Deadly Virtue: Fort Caroline and the Early Protestant Roots of American Whiteness

Heather Martel

Deadly Virtue argues that the history of the French Calvinist attempt to colonize Florida in the 1560s is key to understanding the roots of American whiteness in sixteenth-century colonialism, ... More

Deadly Virtue argues that the history of the French Calvinist attempt to colonize Florida in the 1560s is key to understanding the roots of American whiteness in sixteenth-century colonialism, science, and Protestantism. The book places the history of Fort Caroline, Florida, into the context of Protestant colonialism and understandings of the body, emotion, and identity held in common by travelers throughout the early Atlantic world. Protestants envisioned finding a rich and powerful Indigenous king, converting him to Christianity, and then establishing a Protestant-Indigenous alliance to build an empire under Indigenous leadership that would compete with European monarchies. However, when the colony was wiped out by the Spanish, these Protestants took this as a condemnation from their god for this plan of collaborating with Indigenous people and developed separatist strategies for future Protestant colonial projects. By introducing the reader to the humoral model of the body, this book shows how race, gender, sexuality, and Christian morality came to intersect in modern understandings of whiteness.Less

Deconstructing the Cherokee Nation: Town, Region, and Nation among Eighteenth-Century Cherokees

Tyler Boulware

This significant contribution to Cherokee studies examines the tribe's life during the eighteenth century, up to the Removal. By revealing town loyalties and regional alliances, the book uncovers a ... More

This significant contribution to Cherokee studies examines the tribe's life during the eighteenth century, up to the Removal. By revealing town loyalties and regional alliances, the book uncovers a persistent identification hierarchy among the colonial Cherokees. It aims to fill the gap in Cherokee historical studies by addressing two significant aspects of Cherokee identity: town and region. Though other factors mattered, these were arguably the most recognizable markers by which Cherokee peoples structured group identity and influenced their interactions with outside groups during the colonial era. The book focuses on the understudied importance of social and political ties that gradually connected villages and regions and slowly weakened the localism that dominated in earlier decades. It highlights the importance of borderland interactions to Cherokee political behavior and provides a nuanced investigation of the issue of Native American identity, bringing geographic relevance and distinctions to the topic.Less

Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home: Racial Violence in Florida

Tameka Bradley Hobbs

When most people think of lynching and racial violence in the South, the Sunshine State does not immediately come to mind. While many consider Florida to be less “southern” than, say, Georgia or ... More

When most people think of lynching and racial violence in the South, the Sunshine State does not immediately come to mind. While many consider Florida to be less “southern” than, say, Georgia or Mississippi, when examined in proportion to its African American residents, the state experienced more racial violence than any state in the nation. This historical study examines four lynchings that took place in Florida during the era of World War II-the lynching of Arthur C. Williams in Gadsden County in 1941; Cellos Harrison in Jackson County in 1943; Willie James Howard in Suwannee County in 1944; and Jesse James Payne in Madison County in 1945-and the response to them. As America's involvement in the global war deepened and the rhetoric against the Axis powers heightened, the nation's leaders and citizens became increasingly aware of the blemish that extralegal violence left on the reputation of American democracy. This placed increasing pressure on Florida state public officials-especially Governors Spessard Holland and Millard Caldwell-to do more to end lynching and protect the civil rights of African Americans in Florida.Less

Discovering Florida: First-Contact Narratives from Spanish Expeditions along the Lower Gulf Coast

Florida's lower gulf coast was a key region in the early European exploration of North America, with an extraordinary number of first-time interactions between Spaniards and Florida's indigenous ... More

Florida's lower gulf coast was a key region in the early European exploration of North America, with an extraordinary number of first-time interactions between Spaniards and Florida's indigenous cultures. This book compiles a number of major writings of Spanish explorers in the area between 1513 and 1566. Including transcriptions of the original Spanish documents as well as English translations, this book presents—in their own words—the experiences and reactions of Spaniards who came to Florida with Juan Ponce de León, Pánfilo de Narváez, Hernando de Soto, and Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. These accounts, which have never before appeared together in print, provide an astonishing glimpse into a world of indigenous cultures that did not survive colonization. With introductions to the primary sources, extensive notes, and a historical overview of Spanish exploration in the region, this book offers a first-hand view of La Florida in the earliest stages of European conquest.Less

Indians and British Outposts in Eighteenth-Century America

Daniel Ingram

This fascinating look at the cultural and military importance of British forts in the colonial era explains how these forts served as communities in Indian country more than as bastions of British ... More

This fascinating look at the cultural and military importance of British forts in the colonial era explains how these forts served as communities in Indian country more than as bastions of British imperial power. Their security depended on maintaining good relations with the local Native Americans, who incorporated the forts into their economic and social life as well as into their strategies. This book uses official British records, traveler accounts, archaeological findings, and ethnographic information to reveal native contributions to the forts' stories. Based on in-depth research at five different forts, the book considers features that seemed to arise from Native American culture rather than British imperial culture. The book's perspective reveals that British fort culture was heavily influenced, and in some cases guided, by the very people these outposts of empire were meant to impress and subdue. The book recaptures the significance of small-scale encounters as vital features of the colonial American story, without arguing their importance in larger imperial frameworks. It specifically seeks to reorient the meaning of British military and provincial backcountry forts away from their customary roles as harbingers of European imperial domination.Less

The Life and Times of Mary Musgrove

Steven C. Hahn

Few people in colonial America lived a life as eventful or as improbable as that of Mary Musgrove (ca. 1700–1764), one of the most recognizable figures in Georgia history. Born to a Creek Indian ... More

Few people in colonial America lived a life as eventful or as improbable as that of Mary Musgrove (ca. 1700–1764), one of the most recognizable figures in Georgia history. Born to a Creek Indian mother and an English father, Mary's bicultural heritage prepared her for an eventful adulthood in the rough and tumble world of Georgia Indian affairs. Eventful as it was, Mary's story is also an improbable one. As a literate Christian, a trader, and wife of an Anglican clergyman, Mary was one of a very small number of “mixed blood” Indians anywhere to achieve a position of such prominence among English colonists. Active in diplomacy, trade, war, and politics, Mary was also one of the few women of her generation to engage in affairs typically dominated by men. This book is a historical biography that not only tells the story of her life, but also reflects upon its uncharacteristic features in order to examine the subjects of race and gender as they apply more broadly to the colonial Deep South. My main argument is that Mary found opportunity for social advancement in Georgia because frontier conditions initially blurred the distinction between “Indian” and “English.” In the end, the opportunity for social advancement that Mary enjoyed, brief and limited as it was, closed to subsequent generations of “mixed bloods” because the maturation of the Deep South's plantation system amplified the importance of existing racial and gender hierarchies.Less

Political Thought and the Origins of the American Presidency

Ben Lowe (ed.)

This volume examines the political ideas behind the construction of the presidency in the U.S. Constitution, as well as how these ideas were implemented by the nation’s early presidents. The framers ... More

This volume examines the political ideas behind the construction of the presidency in the U.S. Constitution, as well as how these ideas were implemented by the nation’s early presidents. The framers of the Constitution disagreed about the scope of the new executive role they were creating, and this volume reveals the ways the duties and power of the office developed contrary to many expectations. Here, leading scholars of the early republic examine principles from European thought and culture that were key to establishing the conceptual language and institutional parameters for the American executive office. Unpacking the debates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, these essays describe how the Constitution left room for the first presidents to set patterns of behavior and establish a range of duties to make the office functional within a governmental system of checks and balances. Contributors explore how these presidents understood their positions and fleshed out their full responsibilities according to the everyday operations required to succeed. As disputes continue to surround the limits of executive power today, this volume helps identify and explain the circumstances in which limits can be imposed on presidents who seem to dangerously exceed the constitutional parameters of their office. Political Thought and the Origins of the American Presidency demonstrates that this distinctive, time-tested role developed from a fraught, historically contingent, and contested process. Less

The Seneca Restoration, 1715–1754: An Iroquois Local Political Economy

Kurt A. Jordan

The Iroquois confederacy, one of the most influential Native American groups encountered by early European settlers, is commonly perceived as having plunged into steep decline in the late seventeenth ... More

The Iroquois confederacy, one of the most influential Native American groups encountered by early European settlers, is commonly perceived as having plunged into steep decline in the late seventeenth century due to colonial encroachment into the Great Lakes region. This book challenges long-standing interpretations that depict the Iroquois as defeated, colonized peoples by demonstrating that an important nation of that confederacy, the Senecas, maintained an impressive political and economic autonomy and resisted colonialism with a high degree of success. By combining archaeological data grounded in the material culture of the Seneca Townley-Read site with historical documents, this book answers larger questions about the Seneca's cultural sustainability and durability in an era of intense colonial pressures. It offers a detailed reconstruction of daily life in the Seneca community and demonstrates that they were extremely selective about which aspects of European material culture, plant and animal species, and lifeways they allowed into their territory.Less