A revision of American history, which places the American revolution in the context of a world governed and informed by the \u201claw of nations\u201d undoubtedly forms the backbone of Eliga H. Gould\u2019s Among the Powers of the Earth<\/em>. As this idea has been so clearly defined by several other blog posts already (I particularly like the definition posted by 20perez16, which notes that while peace was the ultimate goal, it had the inherent ability to create conflict), I would like to focus on an aspect of the book that I think teaches us about the motivations of the Founding Fathers to become \u201ctreaty-worthy\u201d in a concrete way: the treatment of Native Americans.<\/p>\n

20perez16\u2019s post notes that while Gould paid nowhere near the amount of attention to Indians as Comanche Empire <\/em>did, he \u201cacknowledged that the Indians had some say in their political relations with the Spanish and British.\u201d While I do see Indians as an important part of this text, I would argue that Gould does not give them credit for much agency at all. While Britain made the effort to treat them as friends (if only to their faces), Gould\u2019s examples demonstrate that the British were merely using the Indians as a tool to undermine first American rebels during the revolution, and later as an attempt to prevent American ascendancy to power. In discussing the First Seminole War, Gould notes that the Ghent peace talks included a British bid to guarantee \u201cthe rights of a few thousand\u2026[to] nearly one third of the territorial dominion of the United States.\u201d (199) I interpret this as the complete weaponization of the Native Americans. While the British (and Spanish as well) may indeed have given Indians what looked like a say when it came to their relations with the two European powers, the Europeans clearly attempted to manipulate Indian opinions and loyalty to their benefit. The British in particular, treated Indians with respect at times, only to abandon them in treaties when they had finished serving their wartime purposes.<\/p>\n

I would also argue that the context of Gould\u2019s \u201claw of nations\u201d framework of early American history does a good job of explaining the American drive to beat Native Americans into submission in the 19^{th<\/sup> century. Americans believed the pacification of Native Americans was necessary to complete and maintain their claim to treaty-worthiness among the European powers. Gould notes that while critics may have disapproved of Andrew Jackson\u2019s methods of Indian removal, they universally seemed to share an understanding that Native Americans were inferior. He cites the specific example of Chief Justice John Marshall, who acknowledged the Indians \u201clacked the standing both of European nations and of colonial people in other parts of the world.\u201d (206) If Americans were unable to achieve complete dominion across their own territory, how could they ever expect respect from European nations? By claiming supreme power for themselves in this territory as a sovereign nation and demonstrating power against internal threats, America could take a step closer to their goal of becoming completely treaty-worthy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"}

A revision of American history, which places the American revolution in the context of a world governed and informed by the \u201claw of nations\u201d undoubtedly forms the backbone of Eliga H. Gould\u2019s Among the Powers of the Earth. As this idea has been so clearly defined by several other blog posts already (I particularly like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}