Border Law: The First Seminole War and American Nationhood

by Deborah A. Rosen

The First Seminole War of 1816 1818 played a critical role in shaping how the United States demarcated its spatial and legal boundaries during the early years of the republic. Rooted in notions of American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, and racism, the legal framework that emerged from the war laid the groundwork for the Monroe Doctrine, the Dred Scott decision, and U.S. westward expansion over the course of the nineteenth century, as Deborah Rosen explains in Border Law."

When General Andrew Jackson s troops invaded Spanish-ruled Florida in the late 1810s, they seized forts, destroyed towns, and captured or killed Spaniards, Britons, Creeks, Seminoles, and African-descended people. As Rosen shows, Americans vigorously debated these aggressive actions and raised pressing questions about the rights of wartime prisoners, the use of military tribunals, the nature of sovereignty, the rules for operating across territorial borders, the validity of preemptive strikes, and the role of race in determining legal rights. Proponents of Jackson s Florida campaigns claimed a place for the United States as a member of the European diplomatic community while at the same time asserting a regional sphere of influence and new rules regarding the application of international law.

American justifications for the incursions, which allocated rights along racial lines and allowed broad leeway for extraterritorial action, forged a more unified national identity and set a precedent for an assertive foreign policy."

Genres: History, American History

328 pages, Hardcover

First published April 6, 2015

Reviews

[Heather McNamara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book starts out very dry and difficult to follow with details of trade agreements and border disputes, but it's worth sticking with. Once Rosen begins discussion of the Seminole wars it becomes clear just how influential that series of political decisions came to be on the current state of things. The thesis is well argued and the sources quite well chosen.

[Jerry Landry · Rating 4 out of 5]

While interesting from a scholarly point of view considering the various larger subjects (nationhood, race, international law/relations) threaded through the actual events of the First Seminole War as well as providing larger context for the arguments made in either justifying or condemning actions taken during the war, it is definitely not a read for the casual reader. Very thorough examination of the intellectual arguments and ideologies involved in this period of history. Very well researched and gave me much to ponder.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rosen looks at the legal justification and ramifications of the oft-forgotten or glossed over conflict between the United States and a variety of groups in Florida at the end of the 1810s. Frequently called the First Seminole War, the conflict involved the American military, under the leadership of Andrew Jackson, against Seminoles, Creeks, Spanish and British residents/merchants, and African-descended peoples. Rosen argues that this conflict was anything but minor in the course of American history, and the larger history of the law of nations. It was in this conflict, Rosen argues, that many of the justifications and understanding of the law of nations the United States and other European nations used in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries (including the American defense of slavery/slave property, Indian Removal, and Manifest Destiny) were first clearly articulated during this conflict.

Rosen draws primarily from US Congressional records and printed legal treatises to explain two legal parts of the conflict. First, how the US's actions and justification for them drew on European/universalist ideas of the law of nations and thus helped the US claim a place as a nation that legally existed on the same terms as European nations. Second, how the US's actions and justification for them aided the defining of the United States along racial boundaries, with whites as citizens of the nation and all others as noncitizens. This racial division, frequently defined as civilized vs. uncivilized, would influence and alter the "universalist" law of nations as the nineteenth century continued (allowing justification for example American Western expansion and European Imperialism). In each way, the United States confirmed its sovereignty, something that had been in question since the Revolution.

Rosen's work is clearly articulated for even the non-specialist to understand complex legal concepts. She also successfully includes all the actors of the conflict, a difficult feat with there being so many of them and scant (truthful) evidence on the non-American actors. One criticism is that the work is repetitive, restating its argument over and over again--although with different evidence and new events/context. This work is a must read for those interested in legal history, foreign policy/affairs, American expansion, and antebellum America.

[Josh Liller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imagine if, instead of a narrative history, someone wrote about the First Seminole War as the subject of their doctoral dissertation in international law. The book is structured thematically rather than chronologically. The Introduction gives you a good idea of what you're in for: a stereotypical university press book - mostly dry and heavy on political theory.

I read select parts of the book for research, which was enough to tell I didn't want to read the whole thing. It's certainly a different approach to the subject, one you probably aren't going to find anywhere else, but also not one that is going to interest most readers.

[Leah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely interesting subject matter but dense, boring writing style that erases the stories at the heart of the Seminole Wars and leans way too hard on the claims of white politicians of the era