Francis Jennings | Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.4

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Francis Jennings | Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Indians and Colonists at the Crossroads of Empire: The Albany Congress of 1754. By Timothy J. Shannon. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000. xviii, 268 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-8014-3657-5.)

This quietly written account of the Albany Congress as a stage in the evolution of empire comprehends the historical issues of the congress and raises some historiographical issues by implication. Professor Timothy J. Shannon explains that the congress was summoned to settle Indians' grievances. Hardly pretending to do so, the congress took it upon itself to recommend revision of the British Empire's structure. This recommendation—the Albany Plan of Union—has misled nationalist "mainstream" writers. 1

In 1753, the Mohawk Indians declared that the Covenant Chain had been broken by New Yorkers' abuses. The Chain had been Britain's multi-tribal, multi-colonial alliance system, much relied upon in Indian affairs, so the Board of Trade was alarmed and ordered the colonies to hold a great Indian treaty in the king's name instead of treating on their own authority as they had formerly done. 2

To this end, delegates assembled at Albany, New York, in 1754. New York's governor James De Lancey manipulated the congress to prevent exposure of his colony's (and his own) abuses; Virginia excused itself from attendance; other colonies disobeyed orders by treating separately as before. . . .

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