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From unsolved mysteries to unexplained phenomena, from comedy gold to relationship fails. Amazon Music's got the most ad free top podcasts included with prime because the
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Ryan Reynolds here from IT Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoy not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three
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month plan equivalent to $15 per month
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then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com history as it happens, it's October 1763. The British Empire has prevailed over France in the Seven Years War, also known as the French and Indian War. But the Crown now has a new or really an ongoing problem. Settlers in the British colonies of North America are moving west into Indian lands and inciting violence. So on October 7, 1763, King George III issues a proclamation, a royal decree, establishing a boundary line along the Appalachian Mountains, forbidding British colonists from settling on lands west of that, an unenforceable attempt to keep the peace with native peoples. The main cause of war with Indians was the seizure of their lands. The frontier beckoned, and here we might see the origins of American empire, or at least the seeds of a powerful idea concerning national greatness and destiny, of expansion and possibilities. We might even roll the clock back to 1630, when Pilgrim John Winthrop delivered his Shining City on a Hill sermon, which has been cited by American politicians ever since.
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The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the shining city upon a hill. The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat. And like the other pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.
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B
Well, speaking of American leaders, did you know Donald Trump was not the first to covet Canada?
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And Canada called me a couple of weeks ago. They want to be part of it. To which I said, well, why don't you just join our country? You become 51, become the 51st state, and you get it for free.
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This is the third installment in my occasional series marking America 2000 and today we're going to talk about the origins of American empire, the notion that America was made to expand across a continent and today across a globe. Alan Taylor is a two time Pulitzer Prize winning historian, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and the author of among many books, American Revolutions, a Continental History 1750-1804. Hello, Alan Taylor, welcome back, Martin.
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It's always good to talk with you.
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For the third installment in my America 250 series, I want to ask you what I asked my other guests. What did you think of the American Revolution documentary on PBS which featured an interview with you? So I guess you're I loved it
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then, of course, it's wonderful.
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You're a little biased here.
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The other people are great too.
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B
So what did you think of the final product? I enjoyed it.
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A
I think it's wonderful. It's everything that I hoped the film would be. Far better than any previous documentary that's covered the American Revolution, much more comprehensive. And Ken Burns knows his business. He's got a team of about 90 people that work for him on different film projects and everybody is superb at their job.
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B
As you know, I interviewed two of the filmmakers, the writer and the producer, and I told them that I had a few minor bones to pick with the final product, six two hour shows and but overall I really enjoyed it. I think people should watch it as a starting point to learning more about something that we should all know about. I think a lot of people believe they remember their classes about this subject from 8th grade or high school and then maybe they don't revisit it again.
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A
What I hear from a lot of people is they say, why didn't we learn this in school? It's like, well, in part school was a long time ago, so you may not remember, but it's also very likely that you were not taught this stuff. The film pays attention to loyalists. It pays attention to the Native American experience. This spends a lot of time on the African American experience and it weaves it all together instead of having these other stories be other stories as sidebars. In fact, everything is woven together into one fabric. And that's I think, the genius of the film.
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B
A lot of social history, a lot of military history. Jack Rakove, another fine historian, did put out a criticism in an article he wrote for Monthly, Washington Monthly, saying that the documentary was light on the ideas, the political history. Do you share that criticism?
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A
I understand why Jack would say it because it is light on those things. But when you're a filmmaker, you're working with visual imagery and you are trying to appeal to a very broad viewership. And so you are going to do things that highlight individuals and their experience in the past, rather than abstract ideas.
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B
I don't know. I thought they could have probably fit in a little bit more about the ideas. Some of your commentary in the film dealt with that. So let me ask you then, Alan, what made the American Revolution revolutionary?
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A
What made it revolutionary is that this is a great rupture in the primary transatlantic empire. It is a revolution in which it declares that sovereignty lies in the people. It doesn't lie in a royal family, it doesn't lie in tradition, but it lies in the people. And there's also a notion that they are starting politics all over. Now, of course, we can see continuities from the British colonial past, but there's a notion that they are creating constitutions. The British had a constitution, but it wasn't written down. But constitution writing is at the very heart of the American Revolution. And this is to sit and pause and reflect and say, what are the structures that will enable the people to be sovereign but also enable these political institutions to endure?
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B
Fundamentally reoriented the relationship between the individual and his government.
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A
Well, when the people are sovereign, that means the people are no longer subjects. They're not subject to the authority of a monarch. They are themselves the sovereigns. And if you're the sovereigns, then you are the citizens. So a republic of citizens is of people who have greater power than subjects do in a monarchy, but they also have greater responsibilities. So the creation of the concept of the citizen of a republic, where the people are sovereign, is very radical.
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B
Yeah, it changes everyone's expectations. And some of the books I've read about the American Revolution have argued that those radical ideas filtered their way through all aspects of society. Even the family unit.
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A
Well, it does have influence because, you know, the. The old model is a very patriarchal family, which was understood in the colonial period to be a mirror of a monarchical society. So when you discredit monarchy as the model for your overall society, then it creates a space for people to question the other arrangements of authority. Now, that doesn't mean that those other arrangements of authority are all going to topple down. It just means that there's a space for people to question them. So it starts a discourse about, well, are these institutions, such as the family, are they structured in a way that is compatible with the republic or not?
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B
And the American revolutionaries believe they were doing this for all of mankind. Right.
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A
They thought they were setting an example. Now. They didn't have the kind of arrogance that you can find today where they are saying, we're going to dictate to other people, we are superior to other people. What the revolutionaries were saying is we're going to show that a republic is possible. Once that's shown, other people will create it for themselves in their own ways.
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B
And the American Revolution was made possible by certain ideas and narratives. It also gave birth to new national narratives as well. And that's what I want to talk to you about here, Alan. As I mentioned, this is the third installment of my series, Part One. I spoke to a historian about Thomas Paine and Common Sense. Part Two, I talked about many of the different ideas we're referring to right now, the ideas of the American Revolution with a different historian. One idea I want to discuss with you in particular is it deals with national narrative. This is something I learned way back in college from my history professor, Jules Benjamin, that what made, in his view, what made the American Revolution and the founding of the American Republic unique was that at the time of its founding, it was also expanding. And expansion was based on some very powerful ideas about the right to move west. The idea of the frontier. Do you locate the origins of that idea in the American Revolution, or does it even predate it?
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A
The notion that people were on the edge of a continent of promising land and that that land was in the possession of native peoples who allegedly did not deserve to keep that land because they allegedly did not use it fully. That's a very old idea that goes back to the 17th century among Anglo Americans. The revolution is created at a moment when the settlers along the Atlantic seaboard have breached the Appalachian Mountains and they are venturing into Kentucky and Tennessee and what would become Ohio, western Virginia, western Pennsylvania, and the land is significantly better there. And so you have this synchronicity of a revolution to create a republic that is happening at the same time that you're having a breakthrough into a much bigger, much more fertile West. And so those two processes do intersect.
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B
One book that I referenced to prepare for our conversation, in addition to American A Continental History by Alan Taylor, a different book that I brought into this was maybe surprising to you and the listeners, Republics of national narratives and the U. S. Iran conflict. But the book starts with a brief history of the United States and the frontier idea. It quotes John Winthrop. We shall be as a city upon a hill. It refers to the. This book refers to this frontier myth that began with Winthrop's Puritans has reappeared in the ensuing 400 years in various forms with standard elements, that it's a very powerful force on Americans and American life. As you say, you know, an errand into the wilderness, A civilizing mission in which the wilderness would be tame. The savages, quote, unquote, savages, native to the wilderness, subdued, and a bounty reaped.
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A
Well, it's not just the Puritans. I mean, it goes back to any of the colonial powers that land on the coast of North America. Now, the Puritans are more articulate. Articulate that there is not a John Winthrop that's available for every culture. I think the point to make is not necessarily this is a puritan idea, but that the Puritans expressed a European idea that was applied to North America, and they did so very eloquently. And those Puritans were especially influential over their descendants, especially those in New England.
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B
So you mentioned the other players here. Let's set the imperial landscape then, Alan. In North America, on the eve of the American Revolution in the Caribbean. This also would include Canada, which was a colony at the time, not an independent sovereign state. Tell us a little bit about who the players were, in addition to the 13 British colonies that we all learn about in eighth grade or whenever.
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A
Well, those 13 colonies are a subset. There's a 27 colonies of the British empire in North America. Most of them were small islands in the Caribbean, but they also included places like Hudson's Bay and Nova Scotia, Prince Edward island and Quebec, which would become Canada. So those are all other British colonies in the West Indies. You'd have Jamaica and Barbados and Antigua and others. And then there are other empires. The Spanish have an empire, quite a formidable empire that at that time included everything in terms of their claim, Everything west of the Mississippi river and points south. The Russians have an empire, and it has expanded into Alaska. The French had had an empire, and they had lost it in the preceding war that had ended with a peace treaty in 1763. But it's not at all clear that the French are permanently out of this game. And because they've lost this empire, it means that they're looking for payback against the British, and they are going to opportunistically then try to assist this rebellion by the thirteen colonies.
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B
Yeah, I mean, these were competitive empires. The French and Indian war, that's the
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A
preceding war that ends in 1763 with a treaty in Paris. And in it, the British and their colonial supporters in the 13 colonies were able to conquer Canada and conquer the territory east of the Mississippi and added it to the British Empire. So it seems like from a colonial perspective that this is a wonderful development because suddenly you've got the French out of the picture. The French had been assisting native peoples in blocking the expansion by the colonists. So now it looks like there's going to be no obstacle to occupying all those fabulous lands in the West.
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B
How well informed was the average colonist, or maybe the not so average colonist, George Washington, and other people who were involved in land. How well informed were they about native peoples and native rights to live in their homes on their lands? Because it seems like, based on what you said already, that the western lands were eyed from the very beginning as something to be taken because the people who lived there didn't really use it right or maybe didn't have the same right to the land as the European settlers would have, because this is a big part of the Revolutionary War.
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A
The issue with the natives, well, the colonists were particularly. Their leaders were very legalistic. And so they didn't have the notion that you could just go and take it. They preferred to have treaties in which native peoples would allegedly consent to give up lands for small payments. But we have to put this in the context. Why would native peoples do that? Well, they do it because there are settlers who are going in and just grabbing the land. And so then the leaders of the colonies would say to the Indians, you're going to lose it anyway because we can't control these people. And so you might as well get some money for it and then just move away and we'll keep the peace. And then if that didn't work, they could always find. Because native peoples did not have centralized leadership, every native people has a different set of chiefs, and those chiefs are often at odds with each other. There are factions within each of the Indian nations. So you could usually find a faction that would accept this payment, even if they were only a minority faction. But you could then say, well, they spoke for the whole of that nation. Those are the processes and how they play out.
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B
As you say in the introduction to your book, in the Trans Appalachian west, the British Empire displayed a fatal combination. Threatening pretensions without sufficient power to enforce them. As Thomas Jefferson noted, you quote him here. The frontier folk will settle the lands in spite of everybody. So after the French and Indian War, the king fellow by the name of George iii, he draws a line on the map, the line of proclamation. This was kind of unenforceable, but I guess this helps us recognize that, yeah, there was a problem there.
- [16:53]
A
Well, when there's an Indian war. The British Empire has to get involved, and that costs them money. And coming off of this war, they've just ended with the French and their Indian allies in 1763. The last thing they want is a massive Indian rebellion in the West. But that's what they got because these settlers are moving into their lands. And then the British were behaving arrogantly toward native peoples. So then the authorities in Britain, who included the king, but the king's not the prime mover on this, but the king's ministers are saying, look, we got to figure out a way to cut our costs. There's. And stop these Indian rebellions. And do we really want these settlers moving west of the mountains? What's in it for us? If they move west of the mountains, their commerce may not flow to the British Empire anymore. Instead, it might flow down the Mississippi river and end up in New Orleans where the Spanish are in control. So there are a lot of reasons for British policymakers to say, let's just draw a line on the map and say, you colonists stay to the east of that line. Well, it's easy to draw it on a map and to put it in a proclamation. But there's thousands of miles, thousands of square miles involved here. And you've got a British army in North America at that time that maxed out at 10,000 men. And they've got business to do up in Canada. They've got forts to maintain around the Great Lakes. You've got, in effect, a few hundred who could enforce this ban on moving west. And these settlers, it takes them a week to build a cabin. So the enforcement did not consist of prosecution in the courts because the courts would always support the settlers. It meant that the British would go and burn these cabins. But these cabins are popping up everywhere, and it takes a week to rebuild them. So eventually, the British troops just say, we can't enforce this. Don't ask us to do it.
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B
It's the first time I've ever heard that story about burning the cabins. So, yeah, the line of Proclamation 1763. We're still 13 years before we hold these truths to be self evident. That was on the Appalachian Mountain. So the Appalachians were the first American frontier. Would you call it that?
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A
Well, the first American frontier comes when they get off the boat, you know, in the early 17th century. So it's. There's been a frontier experience. What's especially significant about this? You say, well, what's the big deal? It's a proclamation. They can't enforce it. And they stop enforcing it. So why do people. People get upset about it? Well, it sends a signal, and it's a signal that's coming at the same time, they're getting the signal that British Parliament says that it can tax all of the colonists without the consent of the colonists. In both of these cases, colonists are perceiving this as the empire is now exercising an authority, a control over them that it had not tried to exert before. So it's that new precedents are being set, and they're precedents that suggest that the colonists are subordinate, that they're inferior, that they don't have the same kind of authority as the people who live in England do. And that is troubling. It's insulting. And so it insults particularly the leadership of somebody like George Washington. George Washington basically loved the British Empire, wanted to have a British military commission there, admired the empire, but he's also got western land speculation interests, and he wants to be taken seriously. He wants to be respected. And other people like Washington, like Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson, they all want to be part of the club governing this empire. And they're being told, no, you're inferior. You're colonists, accept your place. And that place is not in sharing any of the authority of the empire.
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B
Washington was never a British officer. He was a colonial military.
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A
He was a provincial officer in the British service. But they tended to keep those two branches of the military separate because the colonists didn't have the same prestige.
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B
So a combination of personal economic interests on the part of Washington and high ideals. I've always been fascinated with ideas. How ideas influence events, how they could be audible at one level of society, but maybe not at another one. And I started this off by talking to you about what I learned all those years ago in college. What made America unique, if that's the right word, expanding at the moment of creation. And there are very powerful ideas behind that expansion. We've been discussing here the idea of the frontier, as you mention here on page 66 of your book. The cost of land in older colonial counties soared beyond the reach of many young people as the population doubled between 1750 and 1770. Colonial families often had eight to a dozen children, but only one could inherit the whole farm. The other sons could rent land from wealthy landlords who have monopolized immense tracts, particularly in New York, Maryland, eastern Pennsylvania, and northern Virginia. But to escape tenancy and secure independence, poor families moved west to make new farms. So my question is, for these ordinary people, seems like immediate material survival interests may have been more important than some of these more abstract ideas about the frontier or do they interact with each other?
- [22:22]
A
Well, I would say there's a package. So the key idea is a concept of independence. This isn't the independence of a country, this is the independence of a family. They lived in a society where most people were dependent. If you lived in Britain and you were farming, you were almost always a tenant paying rent or you were a laborer. And that's the norm then in the empire. It's an empire of people in which very few people own significant property, large scale property. And a lot of people own not very much and are dependent. So the ideal of being an independent person meant that you could employ your own family on your own property. And in the colonies that's available on a scale that's not possible anywhere else. And people got used to this. It's possible because they're taking land from Indians in order to create these farms. But this is a society of many, many farmers and then some small shopkeepers and artisans. And all of these people are proud of being independent of not being under the control of a landlord. And they've come to think this is an awfully good thing. To be a dependent means that your conditions can only get worse in the future. And that's what was happening to these tenant farmers in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England. And so they have that negative reference point. And a lot of them had fled from that. And they've achieved this independence. But they've also got large families. They got families routinely, eight, nine kids. So you're going to need more land. This is a population that's doubling every 22 years. It's growing faster than any other place in the world. So if you want the next generation to have the same standard of living, which means they're going to have independence too, you're going to have to get more land. So the driver of all of this is a combination. It's a combination of possibility. There is land that can be taken from Indians of ideas. They're not high blown ideas, but they're very deeply held ideals about the importance of being independent of being your own person. You've also got this negative reference point that you're trying to escape from. So when colonial leaders like Jefferson say we can't control these people, they're right. Now there are efforts by people like George Washington, these land speculators, to extract some money from them in order to they can have legal title to their lands. But that's all you can do. You can't stop them from going west and that's a big part then of the creation of the American Revolution.
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B
You can just go and squat wherever you want. I don't know if that's the term they would have used then.
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A
They used the term at the time they were called squatters. Now, it's a dangerous business being a squatter, sure, because you're moving into Indian country. But there were people willing to do it in order to get good sized farms of good land.
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B
Dangerous indeed. There was something called Pontiac's Rebellion. That was a vicious Indian uprising because of the squatting. Right.
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A
That is one of the major drivers of that rebellion.
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B
Yes.
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A
Yes.
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B
Well, as I say, people everywhere, all through time have a right to resist the occupation of their lands. The American Revolution documentary on PBS spends a lot of time on the land issue. Maybe not as a direct cause of the revolution, but it sets the context right for some of the disputes between empire, the metropolis and the colonies. Alan, what you're saying here has me reflecting on how I've always thought about the origins of American empire being driven from, say, the political realm, the United States as a government entity, its first empire before it took over Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, puerto Rico in 1898. It was at first a continental empire, had to conquer a continent first. But the origins of that are really at the lower level, if you will, or the farmer level, the poll west.
- [26:32]
A
I think we have to be careful of the tyranny of hindsight. So the United States has developed into a very formidable nation state which has superiority over its member states. So we tend to explain things as the United States did. This United States does that. Well, that model doesn't really work very well before the American Civil War. It really doesn't work that well before probably the Spanish American War, to be honest. So there are different models of empire. And the United States was a much more decentralized empire and one much more driven, as you say, by these common people who are asserting their own self interest. And then the leaders of the different states have to adjust to this. They have to ride this tiger. They're not guiding it. So that's where we got to be careful in how we talk about American expansion.
- [27:25]
B
And Gordon Wood's book On the period 1789, 89 to 1815 is called Empire of Liberty, and that included many slaveholders. How important was slavery at this point in time in driving Western settlement?
- [27:41]
A
Well, it's important in a number of ways. So I mentioned that people have this ideal of independence and the opposite of independence, of slavery. And in the American Revolution, the radical Agitators are saying that if we submit to British taxation, if we submit to their control over the western lands, we are sentencing ourselves to a future of slavery. Now, it's very hard for us hearing that to say, well, do they really believe that? Well, yeah, they did believe it, but slavery was a more. Was a broader term, expresses the extreme of dependence.
- [28:19]
B
Did not think he would be made to work in the fields.
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A
Well, they were working in the field,
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B
but not George Washington in their own
- [28:26]
A
fields, you know, as an independent farmer. But it's different than if somebody comes along and they have a whip to co. Wear a shoe or they can buy and sell you. That's, you know, the extreme of slavery.
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B
That's what I meant.
- [28:36]
A
But they thought that, you know, if we're in a condition where they can tax us and there's no limit to their taxation or they can restrict our movement onto new lands, then we are in a situation that's closer to slavery than it is to our ideal of independence. So the existence of slavery in their world as an example that they could see is a very powerful one for them. And then there are people who have slaves and they've got children and they want to have plantations. And so that means that those people want to expand into the west and bring their slaves with them to places like Kentucky and Tennessee.
- [29:15]
B
The conversation with Alan Taylor continues. Tap. Subscribe now in the show Notes to skip ads, get bonus content and early access or go to historyasithappens.com@vrbo.
- [29:30]
A
We understand that even the best of plans sometimes need a little support. So we plan for the plot twists. Every booking is automatically backed by our VRBO Care guarantee, giving you confidence from the very start. Whenever you need help, it's ready before your stay, through the moments in between and after your trip. Because a great trip starts with peace of mind and maybe a good playlist. But we've got the peace of mind part covered. Hi, you're listening to Meditating with Jan from Toyota. Soften your focus and video. Visualize yourself off roading in a Tacoma. Now engage your senses. What do you hear? A donkey? Because you're driving the kids to a farm sanctuary in a Grand Highlander. Breathe in, breathe out, and go from dreaming it to driving it. Today, dealer inventory may vary. See your participating Toyota dealer for details. Event ends March 31st. Toyota, let's go places.
- [30:28]
B
So you said earlier there are 27 British colonies in this part of the world.
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A
Well, if you extend this part of the world to include the West Indies, yes.
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B
Why didn't Those other British colonies join the American Revolution because of the Royal Navy.
- [30:42]
A
If you're an island, you're a small island, and you're dependent on trading your produce back to Britain, the last thing you want to do is upset the Royal Navy. So they're. They're much more tied in to the metropolis, meaning England and London, economically and culturally and much more dependent militarily on the protection of the Royal Navy. And they cannot afford to alienate it.
- [31:07]
B
So we've been discussing the chronology here. The French and Indian War line of proclamation, the need on the part of the British, at least in their view, to levy taxes on the Americans and how land is involved in this whole equation. So the war begins. And in 1776, to my earlier point about expansion simultaneous with creation, in 1776, after becoming commander in chief of the General of the Continental army, one of the first decisions George Washington makes is to send an army to invade Canada, to expand, if you will, into Canada.
- [31:43]
A
Why? Well, there was fear that Canada, if it remains in British possession, is a position from which the British could recruit Native American warriors in order to attack the settlements along the American frontier. And the American frontier extends into New England at that time. So it's primarily driven by fear of how the British will use Canada. When the French were in possession of Canada, they used it as a place to supply native peoples to attack the settlements of the 13 colonies. So they think the British are just going to follow that playbook again. And so it's to preempt that, okay,
- [32:18]
B
was the idea to take over Canada.
- [32:20]
A
They're inviting the Canadians to become a 14th colony. They were also inviting the people of Nova Scotia to be the 15th colony. So they have this notion of we're creating a club of kindred colonies that will become states and each will have equal rights. And they're inviting them into this.
- [32:43]
B
So you're saying George Washington and Donald Trump actually do have something in common.
- [32:47]
A
What I'd like to see Canada become our 51st state. We give them protection, military protection. So I'd love to see that. But some people say that would be a long shot if people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100% certain that they'd become a state. But a lot of people don't like to play the game because they don't have a threshold of pain, and there would be some pain.
- [33:14]
B
That was a joke, Alan. I know my jokes aren't funny, but,
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A
you know, I've been spending a fair amount of time in Canada, so. And I'm very empathetic to the Canadian position. And so they don't find Donald Trump funny.
- [33:29]
B
No, it's ridiculous.
- [33:30]
A
If you were a weaker country next door to a superpower that was talking about taking you over, it's very. It's very upsetting. There is a parallel in that when you invite them in to join your club and then you send troops in to say, oh, by the way, we're sending our troops in here and we're expecting you to cooperate with all of this. It's not exactly, you know, free choice that's being offered. And the great majority of Canadians then said, we're not so sure. They were French speaking. They were Catholics overwhelmingly at that time. They don't really trust these people who are hyper Protestants, who've been denouncing the Pope all of their lives and who have been kind of tricky characters wanting to take over western lands. So Canadians at that time, even though they're somewhat different mix of people, they have their reasons not to want to join the American club.
- [34:21]
B
And the invasion of Canada was a fiasco. The Continental army had better luck elsewhere and eventually conquers Florida.
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A
Right?
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B
It was East Florida, West Florida.
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A
They don't conquer the Floridas.
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B
When does that happen?
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A
Well, that happens. The United States starts to mess around down there during the War of 1812, start to send troops in, and they grabbed West Florida shortly before the War of 1812. And then they start to mess around in East Florida until it becomes so unstable that the Spanish agree to sell it to the United States in 1819.
- [34:56]
B
That's right. My chronology is a little off. You could tell I did my preparation here, Alan. But these are important points. The expansion continues after the war ends. So we know how the American Revolution does end with the victory at Yorktown with the help of the French in 1781. The Treaty of Paris is finally agreed in 1783. How does this affect the future of native peoples, the fact that the colonists and not the British prevail?
- [35:22]
A
Well, the British Empire had been making an effort to slow Western settlement, and British do have military posts in the West. And these are regarded in many ways by native peoples as useful to them because they are bases for trade. And they're places where the British would give them presence of trade goods to maintain this relationship, to have that eliminated. And instead you have this new nation which is being run by its citizens. These citizens are driven by an ideal of achieving their own independence, meaning their own forms. And they are expecting their leaders then to lead them in dispossessing native peoples. So it's a big change. Suddenly the political system that you're dealing with consists of the most problematic element of the old British Empire, where the more youthful elements of that empire have been pushed away. So this is disastrous for Native peoples. It means that the pressure on them to lose their lands is going to escalate in a very big way.
- [36:31]
B
And a battle that has been forgotten to history. The Battle of Wabash, Also known as St. Clair's defeat. November 4, 1791. This was an early Indian war, if you will. I know that's a term that people more or less relegate to the second half of the 19th century. This was a severe blow dealt to the United States under George Washington's presidency. But, I mean, the victory was short lived. Would you not say this battle on
- [37:01]
A
the Wabash, it's also called Sinclair's defeat, is the greatest single defeat suffered by forces of the United States. It's on a scale that's three times greater than Custer's Last Stand. Wow. So it's a very big deal. And it's by a confederation of native peoples who have been receiving covert military aid from the British, who have persisted in some of their forts on the Great Lakes. So this is very threatening to the new United States. And they set out first to try to see if they could negotiate a deal with this confederacy. They can't. And so then they send in a bigger and better army and they will defeat it at a place called Fallen Timbers. And after that, the confederation, the Indian confederation falls apart and the British withdraw from most of their Great Lakes forts. And so at that point, the United States has achieved a very significant and important victory. So this happens in the period from 1794-96 is when they really get the upper hand in the west, west of
- [38:04]
B
the Appalachians and will continue to expand westward for the rest of the 19th century, as we know. Was a different outcome possible? I know some historians, Alan, don't like to say something is inevitable, but it seems a clash of cultures was inevitable, given the differences among the new United States, the people of the new United States and the Native peoples and their concepts of land and land ownership and race. All this.
- [38:31]
A
Well, also population numbers. The 13 colonies are the biggest concentration of Euro Americans on the continent. So they're much more threatening than, say, the French presence or the Spanish presence or the Russian presence, which is much smaller numbers. And so those empires are more willing to enter into relationships that are more acceptable to Native peoples because there's less pressure on their land. That's not on offer when you're dealing with the British Americans.
- [39:02]
B
So a different outcome then was not possible.
- [39:05]
A
I would say demography argues against there being a radically different alternative. Now, let's imagine if we're playing this game, that the Indian Confederacy wins at Fallen Timbers, or the British then decide they're going to get much more overtly involved in this war, which seemed very possible in 1794. Let's say it played out that way. Well, the United States is a very new country. This is year five of operating under its new constitution. And nobody's quite sure if this thing's going to work. So if it gets discredited in this major way and they can't expand westward, they're going to lose their authority over all these settler peoples who are just provisionally loyal to the United States. So you could imagine a scenario where the United States breaks up into several smaller countries. All bets would be off at that point. So, yes, it seems like it's inevitable if you look at the larger demographic facts on the ground that the settler population is growing so fast and it's already so much larger than the native population and they're aggressive and they have ideals of having independence that are all antithetical to Native interests. Independence, yes, that's all true, but there is also the contingencies of how events play out that could have broken up the pieces of the United States so that, yes, the continent would be taken over by Euro Americans, but would it be the United States that did this? Would it be something else?
- [40:36]
B
And would Native peoples have a place in any of this rather than.
- [40:40]
A
Well, they would have a place. They still have a place in the United States today. They still persist. It's just that. Would they have a place in which they are sovereign peoples in control of their own fate?
- [40:49]
B
Well, that's what I meant. Yeah. I mean, driven to the point of near extinction in some cases. So in this context, as we discuss the origins of American empire, I referenced earlier the notion that the American Revolutions were doing this for all of mankind. And as an American, I tend to agree and I tend to believe that, yes, the American Revolution was a good thing for human history. It's one of the most important events in human history. Among other things, it gives birth to an anti slavery movement that would defeat slavery one long lifetime later. But not for the Native Americans. I think we can say unequivocally this was not good for them.
- [41:28]
A
This is disastrous for the great majority of native peoples. Yes.
- [41:34]
B
On the next episode of History as it happens, we'll jump into our history as it happens. Time is shift machine and fly back to the 20th century, even the 21st century, and gaze into the changing face of battle. How the Russia, Ukraine war and other recent developments in warfare are the Most consequential since 1945. Make sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter. It is free. Go to Substack and search for history as it happens. Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to Libsynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today
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A
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B
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A
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