[July 17th marks the 200th anniversary of the transfer of Florida from Spain to the U.S. The history of that addition is much more complex than that one date suggests, however—an idea which could be applied much more broadly as well. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of texts that can help us engage more accurately with the fraught, multi-layered histories of U.S. expansion, leading up to a weekend tribute to one of the best scholarly resources for doing so!]
On a forgotten
book that helps us consider the first part of a complex current concept.
I can’t remember
exactly when I first heard the phrase “settler
colonialism,” but it can’t have been too many years ago (which is partly a
sign of my own ignorance I’m sure, but not solely that); yet over the last few
years it has become one of the most dominant ideas in the scholarship
of American history, identity, and culture. As someone who has spent his
entire scholarly career working (not as my only goal, but as a consistent and
central one, from my dissertation/first
book right down to my most
recent book) to make Native American histories far more present in every
aspect of our collective memories and national narratives, I not only support and
endorse but love the idea of emphasizing the ways in which European American
colonists were also colonizers, part of a multi-century, imperial invasion (as Francis
Jennings reminded us nearly 50 years ago) of a number of existing,
sovereign nations. That’s not the only way to frame the story of America, but
it has to be a far more central frame than it generally has been, and “settler
colonialism” helps us get there.
That’s true not
just of the initial European arrivals, but also of all the subsequent European
and eventually United States expansions across the continent (and beyond, into Alaska
and Hawaii and etc.
etc. etc.). Yet without minimizing or downplaying in any way the consistent,
destructive effects that the expansion of US settler colonialism had on Native
American communities and nations, I would add this: at times it feels that our
use of the phrase emphasizes only the second word, the analysis of these
arriving and expanding communities as colonizing ones. And while certainly the
US military and government played far too consistent and destructive of a role
in that process, the truth is that many expansions (and initial arrivals, but
this week I’m focused on histories of expansion specifically) were driven by the
category comprised in the first word: settlers, individuals and families and
communities moving into these territories. And lumping all those settlers into
one frame, while again entirely understandable in its emphasis on what these
histories meant for Native Americans, doesn’t get us too far into understanding
the specific and distinct identities and stories, lives and histories, included
within this broad experience of expansion.
I know as a
literary scholar I’m biased, but I don’t think there’s a better way to push
back such generalizations and get inside more specific experiences and
identities than by reading texts, and perhaps especially ones that have been
previously under-read. One particularly interesting such text is A True
Picture of Emigration (1848), written by Rebecca Burlend with the help
of her son Edward. Burlend,
her husband John, and their five young children emigrated from England to
(eventually, after an arduous multi-stage journey) the woods of Illinois in 1831,
and she wrote the book for a specific audience: other prospective English
emigrants. But while that occasion and purpose offer important lenses through
which to read Burlend’s book, the text is in no way simply a promotional guide
or the like, and instead fully lives up to its title, featuring a multi-layered,
nuanced, strikingly realistic depiction of many different layers to the
experience of emigration and expansion. It’s only one such picture, of course,
so needs to be complemented by plenty of other reading—but every one adds a bit
more to our understanding of the settlers and stories that constituted expansion.
Next expanded
history tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Expansion texts or contexts you’d highlight?
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