The Settlers' Empire: Colonialism and State Formation in America's Old Northwest

Early American Studies

by Bethel Saler

The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which officially recognized the United States as a sovereign republic, also doubled the territorial girth of the original thirteen colonies. The fledgling nation now stretched from the coast of Maine to the Mississippi River and up to the Great Lakes. With this dramatic expansion, argues author Bethel Saler, the United States simultaneously became a postcolonial republic and gained a domestic empire. The competing demands of governing an empire and a republic inevitably collided in the early American West. The Settlers' Empire traces the first federal endeavor to build states wholesale out of the Northwest Territory, a process that relied on overlapping colonial rule over Euro-American settlers and the multiple Indian nations in the territory. These entwined administrations involved both formal institution building and the articulation of dominant cultural customs that, in turn, served also to establish boundaries of citizenship and racial difference.

In the Northwest Territory, diverse populations of newcomers and Natives struggled over the region's geographical and cultural definition in areas such as religion, marriage, family, gender roles, and economy. The success or failure of state formation in the territory thus ultimately depended on what took place not only in the halls of government but also on the ground and in the everyday lives of the region's Indians, Francophone creoles, Euro- and African Americans, and European immigrants. In this way, The Settlers' Empire speaks to historians of women, gender, and culture, as well as to those interested in the early national state, the early West, settler colonialism, and Native history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

393 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 21, 2014

Reviews

[José Angel Hernández · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished reading this book a few weeks ago but was too lazy to write a review of it because I was still trying to assimilate some of the material I had read in Heidegger's "Being and Time," which I finished at almost the same time as I did this one.

The reason for reading this particular book was because I'd been reading about the question of settler colonialism in the Americas and I thought that this particular book fit that description, but it does so only partly. For questions of settler colonialism you might be better off reading some of the more theoretical works in the Journal of Settler Colonial Studies...just saying...

The book is divided into seven chapters and I believe is an updated version of her doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin. I kinda feel bad for some of the historians that went to graduate school there because of the fallout of Jessica Krug, but I digress...The book is divided into seven chapters and are pretty much chronological in nature; however the subject that seemingly broaches all of the chapters together is the very deep history of the state of Wisconsin. At the time in which she situates her history of this frontier, the author argues that these territories were in fact "the American frontier" in the late nineteenth century. I think she makes a very good case, some excellent arguments, and also very well written.

As I'm sure many folks know, I am not an Americanist by training and have spent most of my academic life researching and studying 19th century Mexico, and most of that focus has been on Northern Mexican state formation...and deformation, LOL. But I've always liked reading books from other countries and examples to see what ideas they may have, and this one certainly has several that I think others should take note of. Its definitely worth reading if you are interested in state formation, US frontier colonization, marriage during that time, religion, intra and interethnic relations between several groups, and the historiography of the midwest.

There are numerous book reviews that will do a much better job of treating this monograph in an academic fashion, so I don't want to spend too much time doing an academic overview of the book. Others have done a much better job and their reviews are online. Besides, my own "academic book reviews" never seem to see the light of day. I have at least 3 book reviews from last year that have yet to be published, and I suspect they may never be...

So here I just want to focus what I thought were some of the most interesting parts of the book, and these were the last few chapters on how State formation in Wisconsin had quite surprising linkages to the states' Historical Society. That Frederick Jackson Turner was also a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and employed much of the primary research and book collections from these historical societies was also quite fascinating. It was interesting because I think the author does illustrate how Wisconsin, today referred to as the Midwest, at that particular moment In time was notched up as the lower Northwest of the United States. In other words she is quite sensitive to the historicity of the state in considering that at the turn of the last century, what we know as the United States today was still in the process of formation.

Her last chapter is titled "State of Imagination" and is a great title for a chapter because it speaks volumes as to how historical societies and historians become implicated in the process of State formation. Historical narratives are penned, in other words, not only as the first record of the nation, but in order to legitimize and establish its bonafides. Although it seems a bit dated at this point, the edited volume by Homi Bhabha, "Nation and Narration," seems to be a fitting theoretical explanation for that chapter and it's something that I think is worth exploring for other states.

Because this is not a serious academic book review, I do not feel obligated to say anything negative in order to "balance out" my review. But I was kind of surprised that there was no mention of how Turner's frontier thesis relied heavily on the US Census/Statistics of that era, especially given that he was writing within the context of Wisconsin.

Now, I could be wrong, but when one thinks of US westward expansion, one gets the feeling that the country is moving and closing westward. One might be inclined to think that a person on the west coast would have been more inclined to write that particular history, but such was not the case.

So how was it possible for someone in the midwest to conjure up an image of the "closing of the frontier" when by today's imagination, Wisconsin is in the middle of the country? It was the imagination and influence of the 1890 US census of course. Turner points this out several times in his seminal essay, but I thought that was an important detail in order to contextualize someone like Turner in his proper historical context. Statistics and Science were all the rage during this period, and one cannot help but think of Durkheim's statistical analysis here, but I'm getting into the weeds now, so I'll just stop....

Overall, I highly recommend this book. Its well written and argued and really provides a model of how one can go about doing a proper analysis of state formation in each of these United States...

[Chesney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for a class in graduate school. Not the best, not the worst.