The Comanche Empire by Pekka H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine offered new insight in looking at colonialism within the Americas. Similar to other tales of colonialism, H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine focuses on the tale of expansion, resistance, conquest, and failure, but with a different twist. Rather then associating these factors with European expansion they can also be associated with Indian expansion. Like most empires, \u201cit was first and foremost an economic construction\u201d (H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine 2). This was an interesting point for me as it provided a new interruption of colonialism that I was unaware. It adds to the bigger picture in that we as historians are not just watching a European domination in the colonies, but there were other types of colonialism taking place as well.<\/p>\n

Another interesting point H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine illustrates in the reading is \u201c the \u2018cameo\u2019 theory of history\u2019: indigenous people make dramatic entrances, stay briefly on the stage, and then fade out as the main saga of European expansion resumes, barely affected by the interruption\u201d (H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine 6). I find this aspect so interesting and true when I look back at my understanding of American History. Rather than being to harsh maybe with public school education, other than the large battles fought between the colonies and the Indians, or the forced migration of Indians from their native lands, rarely to do I remember any depth in studying the Indians in America. Similar to what H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine illustrates is that most textbooks write Indians in briefly, scattered amongst the text pages when relevant or supports the broader picture, and soon after they disappear and the European events dominate the majority of information portrayed in the textbook.<\/p>\n

Rather than following the status quo, H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine focuses on offering new insights by being the devils advocate in the common assumptions regarding indigenous people, colonialism, and expansion that changed the forefront of American history. Historians are relooking at the history of the frontier, H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine being one of them, in order to restudy the history of Indian-Euro colonial relations during this time. On the grander level of things, H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine highlights Comanche\u2019s as an Empire by showing the same factors that pushed the colonies. These factors can be defined as goods, ideas, \u201cand the people across ecological, ethnic, and political boundaries, creating transnational networks of violence and exchange that defied the more rigid spatial arrangements Euro-American powers\u201d (H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine 8).<\/p>\n

Overall in my examination of the book, I found it be refreshing and offered a new perspective of assessing the history of the Southwest. Different from other scholars, H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine offers the idea equestrianism and economy in order to make the case that Comanche\u2019s were also empire builders during the same time of European states. Based on my review of H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine work in association with other scholarly analysis\u2019s of his work, he is biggest argument happens to also be his biggest misgiving in arguing his thesis. H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine is the first in his field to argue how the Comanche\u2019s can we seen as a dominate empire in the southwest. Empire is linked to colonialism and expansion based on H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine interruption, while removing institutional meanings from the word, when in most cases empire is associated in ruling large amount of territory, more than one country and should rule over a significant amount of people. When assessing the Comanche\u2019s on the basic ideas of empire, H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine argument falls short and is not sufficient enough to call the Comanche\u2019s an Empire.<\/p>\n

What do you think after reading \u00a0the different sections?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Comanche Empire by Pekka H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine offered new insight in looking at colonialism within the Americas. Similar to other tales of colonialism, H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4ine focuses on the tale of expansion, resistance, conquest, and failure, but with a different twist. Rather then associating these factors with European expansion they can also be associated with Indian expansion. Like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/30"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}