A Post-Exceptionalist Perspective on Early American History: American Wests, Global Wests, and Indian Wars - Hardcover

by Carroll P. Kakel III (Author)

This book argues that early American history is best understood as the story of a settler-colonial supplanting society--a society intent on a vast land grab of American Indian space and driven by a logic of elimination and a genocidal imperative to rid the new white settler living space of its existing Indigenous inhabitants. Challenging the still strongly held notion of American history as somehow exceptional or unique, it locates the history of the United States and its colonial antecedents as a central part of--rather than an exception to--the emerging global histories of imperialism, colonialism, and genocide. It also explores early American history in an imperial, transnational, and global frame, showing how the precedent of the North American West and its colonial trope of Indian wars were used by like-minded American and European expansionists to inspire and legitimate other imperial-colonial adventures from the late-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries.

Back Jacket

Challenging the still widely held notion that American history is somehow exceptional or unique, this book argues that early America is best understood as a settler-colonial supplanting society. As Kakel shows, this society undertook the violent theft of Indigenous land and resources on a massive scale, and was driven by a logic of elimination and a genocidal imperative to rid the new white settler living space of its existing Indigenous inhabitants.

Author Biography

Carroll P. Kakel III ("Pete") is a research historian and a lecturer at The Johns Hopkins University, USA.