|
|
|
REVIEW ESSAY
Matters of Perspective: Interpreting the Revolutionary Frontier
| Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America. By Peter Silver. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007. 352 pp. Figures, charts, appendix, notes, index. $29.95.)American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier. By Patrick Griffin. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007. 384 pp. Illustrations, map, notes, index. $30.)Taming Democracy: "The People," the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution. By Terry Bouton. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. x, 332 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $29.95.)
|
| OVER THE COURSE OF THE PAST FOUR DECADES the traditional narrative of early America has undergone a significant reinterpretation. In particular, social historians cast new light on the lives and cultures of the poor, of women, of slaves, and of the indentured—people and groups often overlooked by earlier historians. Moreover, while historians once tended to focus on the eastern regions of North America, some began to reexamine the early American frontier, and for them Native Americans became a particularly fruitful subject for reinvestigation. These scholars developed interdisciplinary methodologies to understand how native peoples shaped early American history. Academics called this approach ethnohistory, and the phrase "facing east" became a catchphrase to describe the exploration of white-Indian relations from native as well as immigrant perspectives.1 |
1
|
|
The three books under review—Peter Silver's Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America; Patrick Griffin's American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier; and Terry Bouton's Taming Democracy: "The People," the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution—mark a departure from this approach to studying the frontier. All three explore the experiences of those living west of Philadelphia during the colonial and revolutionary eras, and all are influenced by the work of social historians. But they place less emphasis on Indian agency and the importance of intercultural relations than those historians who "face east." These studies, in other words, are histories that face west—some of them unabashedly so. Read together, they remind us how westward-facing histories of the frontier can enlighten our understanding of colonial societies; they also reveal an early America very different from the one that those who "face east" describe. Indeed, it appears that a historiographic debate may be brewing. |
. . . |
There are about 3398 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
