Prairie Imperialists: The Indian Country Origins of American EmpireThe Spanish-American War marked the emergence of the United States as an imperial power. It was when the United States first landed troops overseas and established governments of occupation in the Philippines, Cuba, and other formerly Spanish colonies. But such actions to extend U.S. sovereignty abroad, argues Katharine Bjork, had a precedent in earlier relations with Native nations at home. In Prairie Imperialists, Bjork traces the arc of American expansion by showing how the Army's conquests of what its soldiers called "Indian Country" generated a repertoire of actions and understandings that structured encounters with the racial others of America's new island territories following the War of 1898. |
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... civilization.11 Three weeks later in the far-off Philippines, another veteran Indian fighter named General Wesley Merritt issued a similar proclamation. Although the Spanish had capitulated to the United States, ten thousand American ...
... civilization” in exchange for recognition of its sovereignty and as a “reward” for “honest submission” to American authority.12 At first it might seem that Generals Miles and Merritt, as the advance guard for American overseas ...
... civilization it proffered. Such professions of beneficent intent rested on familiar assumptions of racial and cultural superiority. Eight years before he raised the Stars and Stripes over the customs house at Ponce, Nelson Miles had ...
... civilization ever quite takes a man beyond a secret willingness, even longing to be trapper, ranger, hunter, woodcraftsman or fighter of savages or outlaws, all in one word, scout. In this the high and the low, civilized and savage, the ...
... civilization and savagery themselves.41 In another sense, the logic of empire rendered all colonized people scouts. After the first American troops landed on Cuban shores in June 1898, U.S. General William Shafter offended some Cubans ...
Contents
1 | |
19 | |
Part II Indian Country Abroad | 117 |
Part III The Last Indian War | 199 |
Notes | 253 |
Bibliography | 299 |
Index | 329 |
Acknowledgments | 337 |
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Prairie Imperialists: The Indian Country Origins of American Empire Katharine Bjork Limited preview - 2018 |