American Settler Colonialism A History

Over the course of three centuries, American settlers spread throughout North America and beyond, driving out indigenous populations to establish exclusive and permanent homelands of their own. In doing so, they helped to create the richest and most powerful nation in human history, even as they caused the death and displacement of millions of people. This groundbreaking historical synthesis demonstrates that the United States is and has always been fundamentally a settler colonial society - and, indeed, that its growth as a country represents the most sweeping, violent, and significant instance of the phenomenon in history. Linking episodes too often treated in isolation - including Indian removal, the Mexican and Civil Wars, and the settlement of Alaska and Hawaii - it upends many familiar categories of US history and presents a compelling yet disturbing framework through which to understand America's rise to global dominance.

Walter L. Hixson is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Akron, USA. His most recent book is The Myth of American Diplomacy: National Identity and U.S. Foreign Policy (2009).

1. Introduction: Settler Colonialism, History, and Theory
2. 'People from the Unknown World': The Colonial Encounter and the Acceleration of Violence
3. 'No Savage Shall Inherit the Land:' Settler Colonialism Through the American Revolution
4. 'The Common Enemy of the Country': Settler Colonialism to the Mississippi River
5. 'Scenes of Agony and Blood': Manifest Destiny and the Crisis of Settler Colonialism
6. 'They Promised to Take Our Land and They Took It:' Completing the Continental Settler Colonial Project
7. 'Spaces of Denial': American Colonialism in Hawai'i and Alaska
8. 'Things Too Scandalous to Write': The Philippine Intervention and the Continuities of Colonialism
9. 'A Very Particular Kind of Inclusion:' Indigenous People in the Postcolonial United States
Conclusion: The Boomerang of Savagery