[Two hundred
years ago this week, the U.S.
declared war on the North African nation of Algiers, leading to the unremembered
conflict about which I wrote in Monday’s post. That
Second Barbary War is one of many such forgotten wars in American history,
and I’ll also highlight and AmericanStudy others for the remainder of the week’s
posts. Leading up to a special weekend post responding to a relevant recent
piece by one of my model AmericanStudiers.]
On national
history, local history, and lumberjacks.
I wrote a
paragraph about the 1839
Aroostook War in this
2012 post on complex American histories of territorial conflict and expansion,
and argued there for that forgotten and bloodless war’s significant national
and international connections and legacies. Much like the far more extended, violent,
and famous (if inaccurately remembered) Mexican
American War, the Aroostook War helped determine a border that has become a
permanent part of the national and continental landscape. And its culminating Webster-Ashburton
Treaty likewise illustrated and amplified the period’s international
policing of the continuing, illegal slave trade, giving the war, like the state of
Maine in which it took place, a promiment role to play in the era’s tensions
over slavery and gradual moves toward sectional division and the Civil War.
Better
remembering (or rather remembering at all) this forgotten war would thus help
us engage with a number of significant 19th century, national and
international histories. Yet just as no history of the Mexican American War can
ignore the much more
specific local histories at play, neither can we tell the story of the
Aroostook War without a deep engagement with particular details of Northern
Maine, New Brunswick, and their environment and world. Or rather with one
specific such detail: timber, the
vital natural resource that was and still is found in particular abundance
and quality in precisely the disputed territories between those northeastern regions.
If we have to understand the period’s two Barbary Wars as centrally defined by and
illustrating international relationships and histories (as I have argued in the
week’s prior two posts), then it seems just as clear that, its national and international
consequences and meanings notwithstanding, the Aroostook War was the era’s (and
perhaps American history’s) most local conflict, the most driven by issues and
realities present on the ground in (and to a degree only in) the specific area
in question.
Plus,
lumberjacks. From one of the most prominent mythological
representations of American identity (and his big blue ox) to the unique
and popular sports competition show that has become a mainstay of ESPN’s
non-major-sport coverage, lumberjacks have occupied a longstanding place in our
collective consciousness. Yet despite that cultural presence, I don’t know of
any well-known American histories that include this community or allow us to
engage with what they have contributed to our national story and identity.
Well, the Aroostook War provides just such a history and opportunity, one that
can also help us locate historical lumberjacks in the central role they played
in the development of the Industrial Revolution in America (and around the
world). After all, there’s a reason why both the U.S. and Britain were so
desperate to lay claim to those disputed northeastern territories and their
miles of prime timber—and better remembering their dispute can help put timber
and those who work with it back in our historical as well as cultural
narratives.
Next forgotten
war tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other under-remembered conflicts you’d highlight?
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