This book examines and compares the efforts of France, Britain, and the United States to extend imperial dominion over the Ohio Valley, focusing on the relations between Europeans and Indians to tell the story. In a compelling narrative, it considers the ways in which France and Great Britain each attempted to create viable empires in the region, the conflicts that resulted, and the origins and outcome of the American Revolution in the West. The result is a fascinating story that offers a strikingly new interpretation of the origins, progress, and effects of the American Revolution.

Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800

History

Hinderaker, Eric

Americas

Cambridge University Press

This book examines and compares the efforts of France, Britain, and the United States to extend imperial dominion over the Ohio Valley, focusing on the relations between Europeans and Indians to tell the story. In a compelling narrative, it considers the ways in which France and Great Britain each attempted to create viable empires in the region, the conflicts that resulted, and the origins and outcome of the American Revolution in the West. The result is a fascinating story that offers a strikingly new interpretation of the origins, progress, and effects of the American Revolution.

In September 1755, the most famous Indian in the world―a Mohawk leader known in English as King Hendrick―died in the Battle of Lake George. He was fighting the French in defense of British claims to North America, and his death marked the end of an era in Anglo-Iroquois relations. He was not the first Mohawk of that name to attract international attention. Half a century earlier, another Hendrick worked with powerful leaders in the frontier town of Albany. He cemented his transatlantic fame when he traveled to London as one of the “four Indian kings.”
Until recently the two Hendricks were thought to be the same person. Eric Hinderaker sets the record straight, reconstructing the lives of these two men in a compelling narrative that reveals the complexities of the Anglo-Iroquois alliance, a cornerstone of Britain’s imperial vision. The two Hendricks became famous because, as Mohawks, they were members of the Iroquois confederacy and colonial leaders believed the Iroquois held the balance of power in the Northeast. As warriors, the two Hendricks aided Britain against the French; as Christians, they adopted the trappings of civility; as sachems, they stressed cooperation rather than bloody confrontation with New York and Great Britain.
Yet the alliance was never more than a mixed blessing for the two Hendricks and the Iroquois. Hinderaker offers a poignant personal story that restores the lost individuality of the two Hendricks while illuminating the tumultuous imperial struggle for North America.

The Two Hendricks: Unraveling a Mohawk Mystery

Harvard University Press

On the night of March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd gathered in front of Boston’s Custom House, killing five people. Denounced as an act of unprovoked violence and villainy, the event that came to be known as the Boston Massacre is one of the most familiar incidents in American history, yet one of the least understood. Eric Hinderaker revisits this dramatic episode, examining in forensic detail the facts of that fateful night, the competing narratives that molded public perceptions at the time, and the long campaign afterward to transform the tragedy into a touchstone of American identity.
When Parliament stationed two thousand British troops in Boston beginning in 1768, resentment spread rapidly among the populace. Steeped in traditions of self-government and famous for their Yankee independence, Bostonians were primed to resist the imposition. Living up to their reputation as Britain’s most intransigent North American community, they refused compromise and increasingly interpreted their conflict with Britain as a matter of principle. Relations between Britain and the North American colonies deteriorated precipitously after the shooting at the Custom House, and it soon became the catalyzing incident that placed Boston in the vanguard of the Patriot movement.
Fundamental uncertainties about the night’s events cannot be resolved. But the larger significance of the Boston Massacre extends from the era of the American Revolution to our own time, when the use of violence in policing crowd behavior has once again become a pressing public issue.

Boston’s Massacre

Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press

George Washington Prize Finalist Winner of the Society of the Cincinnati Prize
“Fascinating… Hinderaker’s meticulous research shows that the Boston Massacre was contested from the beginning… [Its] meanings have plenty to tell us about America’s identity, past and present.” ―Wall Street Journal
On the night of March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd gathered in front of Boston’s Custom House, killing five people. Denounced as an act of unprovoked violence and villainy, the event that came to be known as the Boston Massacre is one of the most famous and least understood incidents in American history. Eric Hinderaker revisits this dramatic confrontation, examining in forensic detail the facts of that fateful night, the competing narratives that molded public perceptions at the time, and the long campaign to transform the tragedy into a touchstone of American identity.
“Hinderaker brilliantly unpacks the creation of competing narratives around a traumatic and confusing episode of violence. With deft insight, careful research, and lucid writing, he shows how the bloodshed in one Boston street became pivotal to making and remembering a revolution that created a nation.” ―Alan Taylor, author of American Revolutions
“Seldom does a book appear that compels its readers to rethink a signal event in American history. It’s even rarer…to accomplish so formidable a feat in prose of sparkling clarity and grace. Boston’s Massacre is a gem.” ―Fred Anderson, author of Crucible of War

Belknap Press

During the course of the seventeenth century, Europeans and Native Americans came together on the western edge of England's North American empire for a variety of purposes, from trading goods and information to making alliances and war. This blurred and constantly shifting frontier region, known as the backcountry, existed just beyond England's imperial reach on the North American mainland. It became an area of opportunity, intrigue, and conflict for the diverse peoples who lived there.
In At the Edge of Empire, Eric Hinderaker and Peter C. Mancall describe the nature of the complex interactions among these interests, examining colorful and sometimes gripping instances of familiarity and uneasiness, acceptance and animosity, and cooperation and conflict, from individual encounters to such vast undertakings as the Seven Years' War. Over time, the European settlers who established farms and trading posts in the backcountry displaced the region's Native inhabitants. Warfare and disease each took a horrifying toll across Indian country, making it easier for immigrants to establish themselves on lands once peopled only by Native Americans. Eventually, these pioneers established economically, culturally, and politically self-sufficient communities that increasingly resented London's claims of sovereignty. As Hinderaker and Mancall show, these resentments helped to shape the ideals that guided the colonists during the American Revolution.
The first book in a new Johns Hopkins series, Regional Perspectives on Early America, At the Edge of Empire explores one of British America's most intriguing regions, both widening and deepening our understanding of North America's colonial experience.

At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British North America (Regional Perspectives on Early America)

MANCALL, Peter C.

Johns Hopkins University Press

European colonization of the Americas was shaped by three mass demographic transformations: the catastrophic decline of Native American populations, the forced migration of enslaved Africans, and the mass relocation of European populations to American settings. This essay focuses on the thirdof these developments. While European emigration to the Americas can be seen as a single, widely differentiated but coherent whole, most scholarship treats it in fragments. We offer a hemispheric perspective on the process of European emigration, considering all of the Americas from 1492 until circa1800, when most of the hemisphere was becoming independent of direct European rule. We argue that this migration unfolded in three long eras.The foundations of colonial enterprise were laid in the sixteenth century, especially in the two great population centers of the Americas, where the Aztecs and Incas had already established thriving empires. The seventeenth century saw a dramatic proliferation of colonial sites, widespreadexperimentation with new labor regimes and patterns of social organization, and an acceleration of transatlantic immigration. By the eighteenth century, the essential characteristics of the various colonies were becoming clear and many regions experienced growth and diversification as emigrantsresponded to new transatlantic opportunities.

European Emigration to the Americas: 1492 to Independence: A Hemispheric View

Horn, Rebecca

American Historical Association

America's History, Value Edition, Combined Volume

Edwards, Rebecca

Bedford/St.Martin's

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America's History, Value Edition, Volume 1

Self, Robert O.

Henretta, James A.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hinderaker, Eric. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hinderaker, Eric

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hinderaker, Eric. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800

Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800

The Two Hendricks: Unraveling a Mohawk Mystery

Boston’s Massacre

The Two Hendricks: Unraveling a Mohawk Mystery

Boston’s Massacre

At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British North America (Regional Perspectives on Early America)

European Emigration to the Americas: 1492 to Independence: A Hemispheric View

America's History, Value Edition, Combined Volume

America's History, Value Edition, Volume 1