Before American History: Nationalist Mythmaking and Indigenous Dispossession

Before American History examines the project of settler nationalism from the 1780s to the 1840s in two of North America’s republics—the US and Mexico—through an analysis of historical knowledge production. As the US and Mexico transformed from European colonies into independent republics—and before war scarred them both—antiquarians and historians compiled and interpreted archives meant to document America’s Indigenous pasts. Before American History approaches two iconic imaginings of the past—the carved Sun Stone and the mounded earthwork—as archives of nationalist power and Indigenous dispossession as well as objects that are, at their material base, Indigenously-produced but settler-controlled and settler-interpreted. In making the connection between earthworks built by an allegedly vanished people merely peripheral to US citizens and the literal touchstone of Mexicans’ history, Before American History details how Mexican and US nationalists created national histories out of Indigenous pasts and thereby wrote Indigenous pasts out of their national histories and out of national lands. It uncovers how the manipulation of Indigenous pasts and (mis)interpretations of “American Antiquities”—Indigenous documents, objects and monuments—served the purposes of a trans-imperial/transnational network of creole ruling elites, first in New Spain and British America, and later in Mexico and the United States, as they struggled to construct new political, geographic, and historical orders.

The Economy of Colonial British America

Identifying and analyzing a unified system called the “economy of colonial British America” presents a number of challenges. The regions that came to constitute Britain’s North American empire developed according to a variety of factors, including climate and environment, relations with Native peoples, international competition and conflict, internal English/British politics, and the social system and cultural outlook of the various groups that settled each colony. Nevertheless, while there was great diversity in the socioeconomic organization across colonial British America, a few generalizations can be made. First, each region initially focused economic activity on some form of export-oriented production that tied it to the metropole. New England specialized in timber, fish, and shipping services, the Middle Colonies in furs, grains, and foodstuffs, the Chesapeake in tobacco, the South in rice, indigo, and hides, and the West Indies in sugar. Second, the maturation of the export-driven economy in each colony eventually spurred the development of an internal economy directed toward providing the ancillary goods and services necessary to promote the export trade. Third, despite variations within and across colonies, colonial British America underwent more rapid economic expansion over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries than did its European counterparts, to the point that, on the eve of the American Revolution, white settlers in British America enjoyed one of the highest living standards in the world at the time. A final commonality that all the regions shared was that this robust economic growth spurred an almost insatiable demand for land and labor. With the exception of the West Indies, where the Spanish had largely exterminated the Native inhabitants by the time the English arrived, frontier warfare was ubiquitous across British America, as land-hungry settlers invaded Indian territory and expropriated their lands. The labor problem, while also ubiquitous, showed much greater regional variation. The New England and the Middle colonies largely supplied their labor needs through a combination of family immigration, natural increase, and the importation of bound European workers known as indentured servants. The Chesapeake, Carolina, and West Indian colonies, on the other hand, developed “slave societies,” where captive peoples of African descent were imported in huge numbers and forced to serve as enslaved laborers on colonial plantations. Despite these differences, it should be emphasized that, by the outbreak of the American Revolution, the institution of slavery had, to a greater or lesser extent, insinuated itself into the economy of every British American colony. The expropriation of land from Indians and labor from enslaved Africans thus shaped the economic history of all the colonies of British America.

‘In the Midst of Three Fires, a French one, an American one, and an Indian one’: Imperial-Indigenous Negotiations during the War of 1812 in Eastern British America

This essay argues that the War of 1812 in Eastern British America, despite the near-absence of land-based conflict in this region, marked a turning point in an imperial-Indigenous relationship that differed notably from comparable relationships elsewhere in North America because of the relatively late advent of substantial settler colonization. Diplomacy, which led in 1812 to the conclusion of a series of neutrality agreements in the borderland jurisdiction of New Brunswick, contributed to the forestalling of outright military conflict in the region. But diplomacy of this nature at the same time reached the end of its effective life, as the balance tipped towards a settled environment that eroded the effectiveness of the formerly powerful diplomatic tools of Indigenous-imperial negotiation. 1

Riel’s Petition to The President of The United States 1870

One of the difficulties experienced by the student of the Metis and Indian problem in western Canada is the lack of materials relating to and expressing the native point of view. The document here presented should, therefore, be of some value to those interested in the events which accompanied the transfer of the north-west to the Dominion of Canada in 1869–70. Of the three contemporary accounts of the Manitoba insurrection, attributed to Louis Riel, the Memorial and Petition of the People of Rupert’s Land and the North-west Territory, British America, to his excellency, U.S. Grant, President of the United States, is the earliest in matter of date. It is scarcely a dispassionate statement of the Metis case. The language used is strong and the central theme of the document is the “perfidious treachery” of the Canadian government. The fact of strong feeling and bias does not, however, destroy the historical value of the Memorial and Petition, for it does give the reader some idea of the grounds upon which Riel and his associates sought to justify their opposition to the dominion.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter explains how the history of the laws and legal institutions underlying the colonial credit economy speaks to the history of American democracy and capitalist society. The rise of representative government was closely connected with the ownership of property — both land and slaves — in the history of the United States. In colonial British America, democracy originated in assemblies of property owners often at odds with the policies of royally appointed governors. These first representative legislatures viewed the protection of property interests as a principal role of government. At the same time, however, the credit system promoted the growth of slavery. Property held in slaves was a central underpinning of colonial American credit markets; mortgages on slaves were used to purchase yet more slaves. Indeed, the economic prosperity that better access to credit made possible for White Americans rested in part on the increased suffering of enslaved Africans.

Property, Institutions, and Economic Growth in Colonial America

This chapter places the book's description of how property rights were defined, enforced, and managed in the British American colonies within the economic history literature. As scholars have identified, property rights are central to both political and economic life. The chapter then considers the complexities in making causal claims about the effect of property law and legal institutions in colonial America on economic growth. First, slavery was central to colonial American economic history and complicates the understanding of the colonial past and its legacies. Second, it examines the current economic history literature on growth rates in colonial British America that provides insufficient data to support a causal claim that legal institutions affected growth. Finally, it discusses the central tradeoff, from an economic standpoint, of a legal regime that is centered on maximizing the remedies available to creditors. The focus in British colonial America on protecting creditors' immediate economic interests with few protections for debtors increased the financial risk in the society. To fully understand the impact of laws and institutions relating to credit markets, it is important to consider the tradeoff between growth and the problems that stem from financial risk.