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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN num: 9780195307108
ISBN number: 0195307100
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 224
Printing Date: April 27, 2006
Publishing house: Oxford University Press, USA
Sale Popularity Level: 639832
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
The histories told about American Indian and European encounters on the frontiers of North America are usually about cultural conflict. This book takes a different tack by looking at how much Indians and Europeans had in common. In six chapters, this book compares Indian and European ideas about land, government, recordkeeping, international alliances, gender, and the human body. Focusing on eastern North America in the 18th century, up through the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, each chapter discusses how Indians and Europeans shared some core beliefs and practices. Paradoxically, the more American Indians and Europeans came to know each other, the more they came to see each other as different, so different indeed that they appeared to be each other's opposite. European colonists thought Indians a primitive people, laudable perhaps for their simplicity but not destined to possess and rule over North America. Simultaneously, Indians came to view Europeans as their antithesis, equally despicable for their insatiable greed and love of money. Thus, even though American Indians and Europeans started the 18th century with ideas in common, they ended the century convinced of their intractable differences. The 18th century was a crucial moment in American history, as British colonists and their Anglo-American successors quickly pushed westward, sometimes making peace and sometimes making war with the powerful Indian nations-the Iroquois and Creek confederacies, Cherokee nation, and other Native peoples-standing between them and the west. But the 18th century also left an important legacy in the world of ideas, as Indians and Europeans abandoned an initial willingness to recognize in each other a common humanity so as to instead develop new ideas rooted in the conviction that, by custom and perhaps even by nature, Native Americans and Europeans were peoples fundamentally at odds.
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Rated by buyers -
Shoemaker tries to sell the idea her book breaks new ground by looking at the ways Indians and Europeans shared similar cultural constructs throughout the 18th century. For instance, both groups used gendered language to call the other "women" as a form of insult. However, Shoemaker's analysis never goes beyond description and the vital concept of change over time is lost in a book too full of description and woefully lacking in critical analysis.
I suggest saving your money and reading Richard White's The Middle Ground, which is a much more nuanced argument about Indians in 18th century North America.
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