Looking for American History

 

“… not all of colonial America was English.”

Matt Yglesias has recently taken to publishing excerpts from Alan Taylor’s American Colonies:  The Settling of North America.  I don’t know if he is currently reading it for the first time or he simply found his old edition on a bookshelf and decided to use excerpts in his blog.  If you haven’t read it, and you are interested in American history, you should pick up a copy. It is well worth your time.

Alan Taylor won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1996 book William Cooper’s Town:  Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic. I’ve never had the opportunity to read that history of the father of James Fennimore Cooper and I did not notice when it won the Pulitzer Prize. Alan Taylor was not on my radar the day I was wandering through the history section of Barnes and Noble, looking for a history of North America that wasn’t exclusively an English history.

For reasons too complicated to explain, back around 2003 I found myself needing to learn more about the history of the British West Indies, the German migration to Pennsylvania in the early 1700’s and the colonization of Canada by the French.  I wasn’t sure exactly how much I needed to know and, while  I was prepared to start checking books out of the library, I wasn’t sure where to start.  What I needed was the view from 20,000 feet, a general history of North America that covered all of these geographic areas.  Then I could decide exactly where I would zoom in on. 

My local library branch didn’t have one on its shelves that fit my needs.  The available books were almost completely centered on the 13 colonies, throwing in mentions of Spanish conquistadors and Marquette/Joliet’s exploration of the Mississippi.  There was almost nothing about the West Indies. 

Of course I had access to the entire library system through the card catalog.  But perusing a card catalog is just not the same as paging through actual books to see if they meet your needs.  So I headed to Barnes and Noble sure that it was a waste of time but fully intending to console myself by buying a new novel while I was there.

I wandered through the history section and finally picked up a paperback copy of Alan Taylor’s 2001 book, American Colonies.  I skimmed the introduction:

By long convention, “American history” began in the east in the English colonies and spread slowly westward, reaching only the Appalachian Mountains by the end of the colonial period. According to this view, the “seeds” of the United States first appeared with the English colonists in 1607 in Jamestown in Virginia, followed in 1620 by “the Pilgrims” at Plymouth in New England.  Earlier Spanish and contemporary French settlements were fundamentally irrelevant except as enemies, as “foreign” challenges that brought out the best in the English as they made themselves into Americans. What we now call “the West” did not become part of American history until the United States invaded it during the early nineteenth century.  Alaska and Hawaii made no appearance in national history until the end of that century.

I thought that pretty much summed up history as I had learned it.  But, said Taylor, “the traditional story of American uplift excludes too many people.” 

As I thumbed through the book I realized that it was exactly what I needed.  He said:

Striking a balance between the emerging power of British America and the enduring diversity of the colonial peoples requires bending (but not breaking) the geographic boundaries suggested by the United States today.  Hispanic Mexico, the British West Indies, and French Canada receive more detailed coverage than is customary in a “colonial American history” (which has meant the history of the proto-United States). All three were powerful nodes of colonization that affected the colonists and Indians living between the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes.  The internal cultures, societies, and economies of the Spanish, French, and Dutch colonies also warrant attention lest they again appear only in wars, reduced to bellicose foils to British protagonists.  Such internal description also affords the comparative perspective needed to see the distinctive nature of British colonial society that made a colonial revolution for independence and republicanism possible first on the Atlantic seaboard.

I bought it on the spot. I read it.  And I regularly go back to it when I need an overview of a certain geographic location at a certain time.  I have blogged about how Winnie the Pooh is a “book of my life” because it affected what I expected from a well written story.  American Colonies is a “book of my life” because it changed how I looked at the history of this country.

The book is divided into three parts.  Part I, “Encounters”, gives a general overview of the pre-European continent and discusses New Spain, the Spanish Frontier and Canada/Iroquoia.  It takes us up to the mid 1650’s.  It is not until Part II, “Colonies”, that we truly meet the British, beginning with the colonization of Virginia and continuing through the colonization of the Chesapeake Colonies, New England, Carolina and the Middle Colonies.  There is a chapter about Puritans and Indians and a whole chapter about the West Indies.   Part III is called “Empires” and it takes us from about 1650 all the way to the Pacific colonization in 1820. It includes good descriptions of French America  and has a nice section on the German migration to Pennsylvania. 

If you want a broad perspective on colonial North America, this is the book for you. For instance, often the importance of the West Indies in colonial life is overlooked other than noting that it was part of the “triangle trade” in slaves.  Taylor spends time on their importance in the British economy.  Thus we understand why, when negotiating the peace treaty after the Seven Years War, the British, who had conquered Canada and the French West Indies, considered “keeping most of the French West Indies and returning Canada.”

Although much smaller, the sugar islands were far more lucrative.  But the influential British West Indian lobby did not want to weaken its advantageous position within the empire by accepting new competition from the more productive plantations on Guadeloupe and Martinique.  The British West Indians lobbied to keep Canada instead. … By taking vast new territories in the Treaty of Paris, the British broke with a previous imperial policy that had sought to maximize maritime commerce while minimizing continental entanglements.  Somehow they would have to raise the money to administer and garrison their expensive new domains in Canada, the Great Lakes, the Ohio Valley, and Florida.

My copy is well used at this point.  And over the years, as  I’ve sought out books about specific peoples, places and periods,  I’ve never had reason to think that Taylor got anything wrong in his overview. 

Taylor has a new book out, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies.  It is on my to-be-read list, but first I must finish his 2007 book  The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution.  It has been sitting on my shelf for a few years but I finally picked it up this month and am engrossed in it.

But for all around usefulness, and sheer readability, American Colonies can’t be beat and I recommend it.

The Man

On Tuesday, February 15, 2011 the President will give Stan Musial the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the country.

3,630 hits
1,949 runs scored
1,951 RBIs
Led National League in total bases for 6 years
7 National League Batting Titles
MVP 1943, 1946, 1948
Lifetime Batting Average: .331

Elected to Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969

But most important, he is just an all around good guy.

Laptop Problems

Well, my laptop decided to melt down or something so I'm writing this on my iPad. But even though I like my iPad, it isn't great for CREATING things. It's mostly good for consuming.

So posting will be even lighter than usual for a while.

History is Written by the Victors

On days when I’m disgusted by the avarice, greed, narcissism and selfishness of my fellow Americans I like to remind myself things aren’t worse today than they’ve ever been.  America was born out of selfishness and greed. But they won’t teach you that in schools.

I’m reading Alan Taylor’s The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution and was reminded of this again.  I was also reminded of an online discussion I had a few years ago about a line in the Declaration of Independence accusing King George of “abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies.”   Most Americans don’t know that this refers to the Quebec Act, adopted by Parliament in 1774.  It was meant to resolve the tensions that arose from the British conquest of French North America and help integrate the French Canadians into the British empire. 

Taylor explains:

To please the French Canadians, Parliament endorsed French civil law, protected the Catholic faith, and mandated a provincial government that combined a military governor with an oligarchical council (and without an elected assembly). 

The American colonists were not pleased by this.  Even at this pre-Republic stage in their development the Americans believed that they should be telling people how to live their lives and of course they believed that their way was the best way.  Never mind that the British government had given serious thought as to the best way to integrate Canada into the empire, the American colonists were sure that Parliament was wrong and they were right.  Or maybe they just didn’t care about whether the French Canadians were integrated.  After all, they were French.

But the thing that really drove the Americans crazy about the Quebec Act was that it was also intended to protect the rights of the Indians to their lands.  It was a double whammy for the Americans – protecting red skinned people from grasping American land speculators through a plan that also helped people who spoke French.  See?  Things never really change.   

In 1768 Sir William Johnson, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in North America, had convinced Parliament to create an imaginary line past which settlement would not go.  This would preserve the Indian lands for the Indians, which the British merchants understood was essential to preserving the Fur Trade.  This line cut off the Ohio River Valley from land speculators.  The Quebec Act reinforced this concept by taking away from the colonies any hope of ever controlling the Ohio River Valley because they gave it to Quebec.

Again, Taylor:

The Quebec Act also offended Patriot leaders by extending Quebec’s boundaries south to the Ohio River and west to the Mississippi, subsuming a vast Indian country coveted by speculators and settlers.  An exasperated Parliament sought to restrain the intruding frontiersmen who provoked so much trouble with the Indians. Governed by the military without an elected assembly, Quebec might protect Indians better than Virginia or Pennsylvania ever had.  In effect, the British expanded Quebec to bolster the boundary for the Indian Country that Sir William had negotiated at Fort Stanwix in 1768. But that expansion alienated powerful colonial politicians who doubled as land speculators, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.

Yes, the Americans were very unhappy with these new rules and like all Americans who followed them, they simply ignored anything that didn’t fit into their world view.  The Virginians especially.  They entered the Ohio River Valley illegally and provoked conflicts with the Indians there. In fact, things seemed to be heading toward an all out Indian War when Sir William Johnson, the British Superintendent for Indian Affairs in North America, suddenly died. As with most important points in history, timing is everything and Johnson had very bad timing. At the time of his death he was working with the Mohawks to use their influence to end the Ohio River conflict while he worked the colonial side.  It is unlikely that this plan would have succeeded, but we’ll never know for sure. 

But other things were happening that also affected the Ohio conflicts. 

With the empire in crisis, the timing of Johnson’s death rendered the blow especially ominous.  General Thomas Gage reported:  “I should at all times consider this event as a Publick Loss.  I look upon it as a heavy one at this Juncture, when the frontier People, of Virginia particularly, have taken so much Pains to bring on an Indian War.”  Gage also confronted a virtual collapse of British authority in the colonial seaports, where radical leaders resisted British taxes.  Infuriated by that resistance, Parliament and the Crown resolved to punish Boston by enforcing a blockade with occupying troops commanded by Gage.  That shift withdrew British troops from the troubled frontier in western Pennsylvania, which Indians and settles then drenched in blood.

While I had always known that the American Revolution was not a good thing, in general, for the American Indians I had never before realized that the insurrection in Massachusetts forced the British to withdraw troops from the west who were there to protect the Indians and their land.  If I had thought about it, I might have rationally come to the conclusion that this was inevitable.  But I’d never thought about it.

Over the last few years I’ve read a lot of colonial history and I’ve discovered that I don’t really care for the American colonists all that much.  On some levels they were admirable but on other levels they were abominable.  And, as I continue to read Taylor’s book I find myself wondering what life would have been like if the 13 colonies had lost and the founding fathers had all been hung. 

Snow Day / Reading Day!

I can’t believe how long it has been since I updated this blog.  But today I’m stuck at home in the midst of a snowpocalypse and started thinking about what I’ve been reading lately.  So here is a recap:

Tinkers by Paul Harding.  This small novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction last year.  I started it last September, taking it along to read in the waiting room on the day I went to get my yearly mammogram.  When I discovered it was about a man who is dying, I decided it wasn’t something I really wanted to read at a cancer screening center so I put it aside.  I didn’t pick it up again until a few weeks ago and found myself reading it with the sole purpose of finishing it.  ‘nuff said?

The Gifts of Imperfection: Letting go of who you think you’re Supposed to be and embrace who you are, by Brene Brown.   I’m not much into self-help books and this one, I know, reeks of self-helpism.  But Brene Brown gave a lovely speech at TED about her struggle to understand that vulnerability is essential for wholehearted living and I thought “I’d like to read one of her books!”.   So I did.  And for what it is I really enjoyed it.  It isn’t a self-help book in the sense that it doesn’t tell the reader to do any one thing, she talks much about her own struggle to realize her authentic self. 

"I try to make authenticity my number one goal when I go into a situation where I'm feeling vulnerable.  If authenticity is my goal and I keep it real, I never regret it.  I might get my feelings hurt, but I rarely feel shame.  When acceptance or approval becomes my goal, and it doesn't work out, that can trigger shame for me: "I'm not good enough.  If the goal is authenticity and they don't like me, I'm okay.  If the goal is being liked and they don't like me, I'm in trouble.  I get going by making authenticity the priority."

As someone who has had lifelong struggles with self-esteem, I found many of her ideas very useful.

A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert.   I enjoyed this story of multi-generations of women, most of whom are confusingly named Dorothy.  The first Dorothy starved herself to death in the fight to give women the vote in Britain.  A later Dorothy engages in civil disobedience in modern day Delaware.  All of the women are trying to find their own place in their worlds.  Walbert crammed a lot of ideas in a small book in which the story is not told chronologically but moves back and forth between the generations.

The Book of Joe by Jonathan Tropper.   Joe left his hometown behind, shook the dust off his feet and wrote a best-selling novel based on fictitious versions of town characters which was made into a moderately successful movie (starring Leo DiCaprio).  But now Joe’s father is dying and he must return and face the wrath of the townspeople who feel ill-used.   It is a good premise.  Reviews said it was funny.  My book group agreed that was false advertising.  We thought it was sad and we thought Joe was an asshole,  In fact, Joe agrees that he is an asshole. But you know what?  Admitting that you are an asshole doesn’t really make you NOT an asshole.  I suspect that men would like this book more than women.

I’m currently working on Alan Taylor’s The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution and Patti Smith’s Just Kids.

Cahokia Mounds

As I’ve written about before, the east and west sides of the Mississippi River at St. Louis used to be the site of many Indian mounds:

Across the river from St. Louis is the interpretive center for the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site where archaeologists have spent years investigating the culture of the long lost Mississippian mound builders.  The mounds were originally on both sides of the river though and were spread throughout the site that is now St. Louis.  Over the years they were destroyed as structures in the city were built.

National Geographic has a nice write up about Cahokia this month that’s worth reading. 

Everyone agrees that Cahokia developed quickly a couple centuries after corn became an important part of the local diet, that it drew together people from the American Bottom, and that it dwarfed other Mississippian communities in size and scope. The battle lines tend to form along the questions of how populous it was, how centralized its political authority and economic organization were, and the nature and extent of its reach and influence.

The people of Cahokia (we do not even know what they called themselves) were long gone by the time Europeans reached this part of the continent.   But for about 300 years they maintained a large, settled community.  According to the article, it was hard for Europeans to imagine the “savages” having a city and the whole concept of a city didn’t fit in with Andrew Jackson’s plan to forcibly push the “nomadic” Indians west.  But it was there.  And archaeologists continue to dig.

I visited the interpretive center a couple of months ago and was quite impressed.  I’ve never found time to really write about it but I want to go back again.  Especially after reading this article.

Amen

Reading Digby today, I was reminded of the words of Robert Kennedy, spoken at a time of great national shock and sorrow.  Looking at those words again, I find it hard to imagine that he could speak so eloquently and with such kindness and hope, when speaking more or less extemporaneously. 

These last few days have reminded me of being a child, when political violence happened regularly.  A few years ago, a colleague of mine, who is the same age as me, tried to explain to the “young people” at our office what it was like to be a child in the 60’s like we were.  What it was like to assume that anyone who rose in public office was liable to be assassinated.   How we simply took it for granted.  And how, looking back at that attitude, how crazy it seems today.  Hopefully it will not come to that again.

Senator Robert F. Kennedy
Indianapolis, Indiana
April 4, 1968

This is the text from news release version.

I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black--considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible--you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization--black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love--a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.