1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus Review

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1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus ReviewMann gives the reader a comprehensive overview of the new theories concerning native American societies before the colonial period. The story is intriguing, and the fascinating narrative will hold the reader's complete attention. The assertions made are too numerous and complex to go into in any detail here, but in brief: we are told that the Western Hemisphere was actually much more populous than anyone had imagined previously. Most of the inhabitants were wiped out by plagues brought by the Europeans. Far from being either brutal and child-like, or "noble savages", the native Americans had established sophisticated societies which served large and growing populations, and which had great impact on their natural environments. No small Indian tribes living in a vast, untamed wilderness! To the contrary, fire was used repeatedly to burn off weeds and undergrowth, extensive mounds and other structures were raised to provide crop land and ponds for fish breeding, and cultivation was widespread. Indeed, Mann asserts that the Amazon, far from being the quintessential wilderness most regard it as, is actually a garden gone wild!
The tale is breathtaking in its scope. But is it true? The author of 1491 acknowledges that the new theories are controversial. For example: everyone agrees the Europeans brought diseases which wiped out large numbers of Indians. But not all agree that the original population was anywhere near the levels claimed. And many researchers contend that structures claimed to be of human origin, such as the Beni causeways in Bolivia, are actually of natural origin. This reader withholds judgement until a lot more evidence is forthcoming. However, everyone interested in history owes it to themselves to read this spellbinding story of an America that just might have been, and then watch as it is either confirmed or refuted by continuing, widely based research.1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus Overview

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Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America's Frontier Review

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Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America's Frontier ReviewOK-I'm going on the wild assumption that you're checking out this book because of your interest in Lewis and Clark. Be warned, the subject matter in Christian's book is somewhat tangentially related, although you will be given little entertaining factoids such as that one of the scientific specimens sent back to Jefferson from St Louis at the start of the Expedition was a large hairball from the stomach of a buffalo.
I live in St Louis, so I found the story of its founding (by the Chouteaus and their father/husband Laclede) interesting. Christian lives up to the subtitle by giving you a detailed picture of the life of this dynasty as it affected this area, which means you get a good idea of what it was like to be a trader on the Missouri (and some of the neighboring rivers), including interesting insights into relations with American Indians. Indeed, it was quite eye-opening to see how welcoming the Indians initially were of the French settlers/traders in and around St Louis. It was also informative to read of how the French and Indians interbred and lived quite comfortably with one another, although on unequal terms. The Chouteau dynasty began in the 1760's and continued for roughly another 80 years or so, so they had to accommodate and adapt to the change in governance that occurred with the Louisiana Purchase by the US (which although purchased from France, consisted of a territory immediately previously administered-with a very long rein-by Spain).
If you're looking more for some background into what was known about the area encompassed by the Louisiana Purchase at the time L + C started off on their expediation (and quite a bit was known; and in fact North America had already been traversed in Canada, so L + C weren't quite the 'firsts' they're made out to be), check out The Course of Empire by DeVoto.
To learn about the journey itself which, not withstanding the caveats above, is truly fascinating story, do yourself a favor and try to find something other than the popular Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose. The account provided by Ambrose is in my opinion is seriously flawed, fundamentally lacking in basic historical background necessary to appreciate the Expedition, e.g., any indication of who'd previously explored the regions into which they were heading and lacking a summary map illustrating the geographic (mis)information L + C used to plan their journey. Undaunted Courage also falls down whenever Ambrose attempts the most rudimentary analysis. To top it off, his writing style often made me cringe.
To provide socioeconomic and political background to the Purchase and the settlement that was to follow it, I recommend Mr Jefferson's Loast Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase by Roger Kennedy.Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America's Frontier Overview

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The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders, and American Expansion (The Lamar Series in Western History) Review

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The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders, and American Expansion (The Lamar Series in Western History) Review
Jay Gitlin's book, Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders & American Expansion, is excellent. This is from a lay-historian whose interest in French colonial history is primarily in the Lower Mississippi Valley. While familiar with 18th century Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Texas Indian traders, I had not gotten around to studying the French traders in Upper Louisiana. Therefore, the book was a perfect introduction to the fur traders, primarily of St. Louis, who traded to the west of the Mississippi in the late 1800s into the 19th century. But more than just an introduction, it was an interesting study of the rise socially, politically, and economically of a group of rough, smart and capable French frontiersmen who became educated and sophisticated merchants and business leaders and still kept their French character. It is a clear overview of events and important players of that area in that time.
That said, although I thoroughly enjoyed the chapters on the Chouteaus and related trader bourgeois merchants, my favorite chapter was "La Confederation Perdue." This chapter is a very good overview of 19th century Francophone merchants of Louisiana, especially New Orleans, before, during and after the Civil War. It is so clearly the reality of what happened to the non-planter French creoles, black and white, as the war changed everything.
In Bourgeois Frontier, Gitlin pours out facts, well-documented in footnotes, and clearly presented. My only complaint is that at 190 pages (plus 78 pages of excellent footnotes and bibliography, and index), it is too short.
The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders, and American Expansion (The Lamar Series in Western History) OverviewHistories tend to emphasize conquest by Anglo-Americans as the driving force behind the development of the American West. In this fresh interpretation, Jay Gitlin argues that the activities of the French are crucial to understanding the phenomenon of westward expansion.
The Seven Years War brought an end to the French colonial enterprise in North America, but the French in towns such as New Orleans, St. Louis, and Detroit survived the transition to American rule. French traders from Mid-America such as the Chouteaus and Robidouxs of St. Louis then became agents of change in the West, perfecting a strategy of "middle grounding" by pursuing alliances within Indian and Mexican communities in advance of American settlement and re-investing fur trade profits in land, town sites, banks, and transportation. The Bourgeois Frontier provides the missing French connection between the urban Midwest and western expansion. (20091201)

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Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts Review

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Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts ReviewDaniel Richter's "Before the Revolution" is among a handful of recent major histories of early America that compel a serious re-thinking of our political and economic origins - particularly in light of current voices in national and state politics. First, one must admire the extraordinary grasp of detail evident in this work. The book must be a summa of an entire lifetime of careful study. But more importantly, details in this work paint the larger movements of life throughout the settlement of this country. Richter's conceptual handle on the themes of America's early development are richly conveyed throughout every stage in this history. One looks to historians for far more than facts and Richter delivers in very compelling ways. The prose is lucid and gives a solid narrative sense without losing the reader among tangential episodes. The book gives yet more evidence of how profoundly early American culture and settlement events were shaped by religious and political trends in England and Europe. Richter captures the conflation of spiritual/religious motives with raw greed for land and power in ways that make a mockery of typical lay renderings of this time period. One's understanding of the sources for slavery of Native Americans, Irish and English down-and-outs,and then of Africans are exhaustively conveyed in this text. One cannot walk away feeling utterly freed from the lasting effects of this history.
Richter's work stands among several others of note for this time period. Fred Anderson's "The Crucible of War" is another richly detailed and comprehensive account of some of the same period. Kevin Phillip's "The Cousin's War" underscores some similar themes with again a rich narrative and conceptual grasp in showing how the issues arising from the English Civil War fed into the American Revolution and Civil War. Gary B. Nash's "The Unknown American Revolution" compels a radical re-understanding of the various forces leading into the American Revoultion - again with emphasis on the curious admixture of ideals and raw power-thrusting behaviors. Alan Taylor's "The Civil War of 1812" picks up a few decades later, but is again a masterful treatment of many of the same themes contained in these other histories.
I underline as I read to capture the most salient or instructive passages. Suffice it to say I found myself underlining something on almost every page of Richter's work. What a great text to use for a history course! To my reading, Richter and the other authors mentioned above make of most "history" that is taught in the secondary schools mere propaganda. We live in a bubble of fantasies about what our country was made from and judging from contemporary politicians' statements, we continue to fabricate moral myths from a past that offers little moral inspiration.Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts Overview
America began, we are often told, with the Founding Fathers, the men who waged a revolution and created a unique place called the United States. We may acknowledge the early Jamestown and Puritan colonists and mourn the dispossession of Native Americans, but we rarely grapple with the complexity of the nation's pre-revolutionary past. In this pathbreaking revision, Daniel Richter shows that the United States has a much deeper history than is apparent—that far from beginning with a clean slate, it is a nation with multiple pasts that stretch back as far as the Middle Ages, pasts whose legacies continue to shape the present.

Exploring a vast range of original sources, Before the Revolution spans more than seven centuries and ranges across North America, Europe, and Africa. Richter recovers the lives of a stunning array of peoples—Indians, Spaniards, French, Dutch, Africans, English—as they struggled with one another and with their own people for control of land and resources. Their struggles occurred in a global context and built upon the remains of what came before. Gradually and unpredictably, distinctive patterns of North American culture took shape on a continent where no one yet imagined there would be nations called the United States, Canada, or Mexico.

By seeing these trajectories on their own dynamic terms, rather than merely as a prelude to independence, Richter's epic vision reveals the deepest origins of American history.
(20110315)

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