Journal18, Fall 2022 — Silver
In the latest issue of J18:
Journal18, Issue #14 (Fall 2022) — Silver
Issue edited by Agnieszka Anna Ficek and Tara Zanardi
I N T R O D U C T I O N
Agnieszka Anna Ficek and Tara Zanardi
In his 1656 treatise El Paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo, Antonio de León Pinelo contends that the amount of silver extracted from Potosí’s Cerro Rico was enough to build a bridge of silver from the top of the mountain to the doors of Madrid’s Royal Palace: 2,070 leagues long, 14 rods wide, and 4 fingers thick.[1] The vivid imagery of León Pinelo’s account encapsulates the magnitude of silver’s potential as the material foundation for a fantastical building project that could physically scale the earth much like the Spanish Empire did politically, militarily, and financially. Silver’s beauty, mutability, and strength coveted by Spanish colonists led to the production of spectacular objects, such as the ornamental plaque from a Jesuit Mission in the Andean highlands that serves as this issue’s cover image. At once luxurious and symbolic, the plaque’s decoration features tulips and other plants cultivated in Europe, interwoven in a repouséd floral ground with indigenous passion flowers (mburucuyà), nibbled by native birds, to create an image of a harmonious colonial society. Both the imaginary bridge and the ornamental plaque belie the violence the Spanish Crown and the Church exerted in subjugating native populations and instituting a system of forced labor to extract this precious metal.
Within and beyond the Spanish Empire, silver financed wars, upheld dynasties, and cemented political alliances. Forged into currency, silver funded slavery and the institution’s production of goods such as sugar and cacao. Silver was also valued around the globe for its pliability and sheen. From Beijing to Versailles, Mexico City to Lisbon, it furnished grand homes, glittering on dinner tables and dressing tables alike. Skilled artists manipulated silver into opulent objects, capitalizing on its luster to fabricate sinuous forms in small-scale decorative artworks as well as ambitious commissions that communicated wealth and political might.
This issue probes silver’s capacity for metamorphosis—from raw material into objects and currency. Such transformative characteristics made it a valuable medium for artists, a tool for global expansion, and a form of income for rebuilding state treasuries. . . .
A R T I C L E S
• Dani Ezor — ‘White when Polished’: Race, Gender, and the Materiality of Silver at the Toilette
• Christina K. Lindeman — Silver Thread Textiles: Industry, Dynasty, and Political Power in Eighteenth-Century Prussia
• Susan Eberhard — The Asian Silver Chocolatière: The Transpacific World in a Diplomatic Gift
E X P L O R A T I O N S
• James Middleton — An Eighteenth-Century Portrait Miniature on Silver: An Artifact from the Silver Age of Mexico
• José Andrés De Leo Martínez — La distinción del cáliz de Puebla de los Ángeles en el s. XVIII, entre dos Mundos
• Christina Clarke — Reanimating the Goldsmith: An Artisanal Reading of the Archive
Cover image: Ornamental Plaque (mariola or maya), one of a pair, 1725–50, Moxos or Chiquitos missions, Alto Peru (present-day Bolivia), silver, 42 × 31 × 3 cm (Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 1992.346).
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R E C E N T N O T E S & Q U E R I E S
• Jessica L. Fripp — Review of Raphaël Barontini’s show Blue Lewoz (Paris: Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, summer 2022), published in J18 October 2022. Link»
The title Blue Lewoz brings together léwoz, the music and dance created by the enslaved people on Guadaloupe, and indigo blue, a dye that was a staple of the transatlantic slave trade. Barontini writes on his Instagram that Creole Dancer was inspired by a 1950 collage by Matisse of the same name, and a tribute to the “Caribbean women and the place of the dance in the Guadeloupean léwoz tradition.” From this twentieth-century inspired work, viewers quickly moved into an alternative history of fashion and luxury of early modern Europe: collages that incorporate Jean-Marc Nattier’s eighteenth-century dresses, Bronzino’s elaborate fabrics, and Elizabethan ruffs. While Barontini’s appropriation and sources stretch wider than the long eighteenth century, many of the fashions in those portraits were the product of, as Alicia Caticha notes, “Atlantic slave trade and a host of other exploitative global networks.” And, as scholars such as Anne Lafont and Mechtild Fend have shown, portraits were often used to construct and highlight whiteness.[1] Barontini’s work reinvents those portraits and, through collage, tapestries, and textiles, celebrates resistance and Caribbean festivals. . .
• Michelle Sylliboy — “Artist’s Notes: Nm’ultes is an Active Dialogue: I Reclaiming Komqwejwi’kasikl, II An Autobiographical Creative Inquiry, and III forthcoming” published in J18 in three parts, June 2022, October 2022. Link»
Published in three installments, this intervention by L’nu interdisciplinary artist, poet, and scholar Michelle Sylliboy offers an Indigenous perspective on the colonial archive. Sylliboy responds to the dehumanizing accounts of her ancestors in Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie (Paris, 1691) and reclaims the komqwejwi’kasikl language from its author, French missionary Chrestien Le Clercq, who culturally appropriated its writing system. Using autobiographical creative inquiry and Nm’ultes theory, Sylliboy addresses the ongoing impact of settler colonialism on her people, the L’nuk. As a survivor of intergenerational trauma, she tells the intersecting stories of healing and reconnecting with the worldview of her ancestors, who have been caretakers of a land that stretches from the Gaspé peninsula to Newfoundland since immemorial times.
New Book | Louis Lagrenée (1725–1805)
From Arthena:
Joseph Assémat-Tessandier, with a preface by Jan Blanc, Louis Lagrenée (1725–1805) (Paris: Arthena, 2022), 472 pages, ISBN: 978-2903239701, €99,
Peintre d’Histoire, à la belle carrière officielle, Louis Lagrenée (1725–1805) présente plus de 150 tableaux au Salon du Louvre de 1755 à 1789. Soulevant à plusieurs reprises l’enthousiasme de Diderot, sa peinture est appréciée des milieux financiers et aristocratiques, jusqu’à la Cour de Russie. Son succès au Salon de 1763 lui donne accès aux commandes pour les demeures royales. Il participe ensuite au programme d’encouragement de la peinture d’Histoire, organisé par le comte d’Angiviller de 1777 à 1789 (La Mort de la femme de Darius ou Les Deux Veuves d’un officier indien). De ses petits tableaux de cabinet (Vierge à l’Enfant, allégories ou scènes mythologiques) aux grands sujets inspirés de l’histoire ancienne (Annibal ayant trouvé le corps de Marcellus), son style épuré et raffiné au coloris délicat lui vaut le surnom d’ ‘Albane français’.
Les découvertes de ces dernières années (carnets de croquis, dessins préparatoires et réapparition d’oeuvres perdues), qui ont permis de doubler le corpus connu de Lagrenee l’aîné, ainsi différencié de son frère Jean-Jacques (1739–1821), apportent un nouvel éclairage sur son art, jalon précieux dans l’évolution de la peinture française vers le néoclassicisme naissant.
Joseph Assémat-Tessandier a soutenu en avril 2020 à l’université de Genève, sa thèse en histoire de l’art sur le peintre Louis Lagrenée. Diplômé de Sciences Po Paris et de l’Insead, il a travaillé auparavant dans des institutions financières américaine et française. Ses recherches se poursuivent à l’heure actuelle sur le peintre Jean-Jacques Lagrenée.
Exhibition | Promenades on Paper: 18th-C. French Drawings
From The Clark:
Promenades on Paper: 18th-Century French Drawings from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Promenades de papier: Les collections de dessins du 18e siècle de la BnF
The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, 17 December 2022 — 12 March 2023
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours, 13 May — 28 August 2023
Curated by Esther Bell, Sarah Grandin, Anne Leonard, Corinne Le Bitouzé, Pauline Chougnet, and Chloé Perrot
François-Joseph Bélanger, The Garden of Beaumarchais, 1788, watercolor and pen and ink (Bibliothèque nationale de France).
In partnership with the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), the Clark is organizing the first exhibition of the library’s eighteenth-century French drawings. The selection of eighty-six enchanting studies, architectural plans, albums, sketchbooks, prints, and optical devices expands our understanding of drawing as a tool of documentation and creation in the age of Enlightenment, spanning the domains of natural history, current events, theater design, landscape, and portraiture. Displayed together, these objects immerse audiences in the world of eighteenth-century France—a world shaped by invention, erudition, and spectacle. Works by celebrated artists of the period such as François Boucher (1703–1770) and Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724–1780) are featured alongside exquisite drawings by lesser-known practitioners, including talented women, royal children, and visionary architects.
Promenades on Paper: Eighteenth-Century French Drawings from the Bibliothèque nationale de France is co-organized by the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. It is curated by Esther Bell, Deputy Director and Robert and Martha Berman Lipp Chief Curator; Sarah Grandin, Clark-Getty Curatorial Fellow; and Anne Leonard, Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs from the Clark, and by Corinne Le Bitouze, Conservateur général; Pauline Chougnet, Conservateur en charge des dessins; and Chloé Perrot, Conservateur des bibliothèques from the Bibliothèque nationale.
This exhibition is made possible by Jessie and Charles Price. Major funding is provided by Elizabeth M. and Jean-Marie Eveillard, the Getty Foundation through its Paper Project initiative, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. The exhibition catalogue is made possible by Denise Littlefield Sobel.
Esther Bell, Pauline Chougnet, Sarah Grandin, Charlotte Guichard, Corinne Le Bitouzé, Anne Leonard, and Meredith Martin, Promenades on Paper: Eighteenth-Century French Drawings from the Bibliotheque nationale de France (Williamstown: Clark Art Institute, 2023), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0300266931, $50.
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Note (added 12 June 2023) — The posting was updated to include the Tours venue.
New Book | La légèreté et le grave
From Passés Composés:
Cécile Berly, La légèreté et le grave: Une histoire du XVIIIe siècle en tableaux (Paris: Passés Composés, 2021), 150 pages, ISBN: 978-2379334009, €24.
Le XVIIIe siècle s’ouvre avec Le Pèlerinage à l’île de Cythère d’Antoine Watteau et s’achève avec La Mort de Marat de Jacques-Louis David : la naissance de la fête galante versus l’agonie d’un tribun révolutionnaire. Deux chefs-d’œuvre qui illustrent la légèreté et la gravité d’un siècle, deux facettes antagonistes mais complémentaires d’une même époque.
Les dix œuvres ici racontées sont ainsi autant de jalons pour saisir ce siècle passionnant dans ses innombrables contradictions : elles correspondent toutes à un moment du XVIIIe et disent son histoire artistique, culturelle, philosophique, sociale, économique et, bien évidemment, politique. Autant de chefs-d’œuvre qui ont forgé une société nouvelle, éprise de liberté, d’indépendance et de transgressions, au fil d’un siècle qui, sous la plume sensible de Cecile Berly, oscille sans cesse entre une légèreté savamment entretenue et une gravité qui confine au drame.
Historienne, spécialiste du XVIIIe siècle, Cécile Berly a publié plusieurs ouvrages sur Marie-Antoinette. Elle a également présenté et annoté la correspondance de Madame de Pompadour, et est l’auteure des Femmes de Louis XV et de Trois femmes: Madame du Deffand, Madame Roland, Madame Vigée Le Brun.
Exhibition | Fashion and Music in Revolutionary France
Magasin des Modes Nouvelles, Troisième Année, Vingtième Cahier, 30 Mai 1788, 30, 1788, text with engraving
(Mia, The Minnich Collection The Ethel Morrison Van Derlip Fund, 1966, P.15,303-P.15,305)
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From the press release (22 August 2022) for the exhibition at Mia:
Revolution à la Mode: Fashion and Music in Revolutionary France
Minneapolis Institute of Art, 10 September 2022 — 5 March 2023
Curated by Nicole LaBouff
The Minneapolis Institute of Art presents an exhibition of 18th-century French periodicals documenting the French Revolution and the tumultuous years leading up to it. Revolution à la Mode: Fashion and Music in Revolutionary France features hand-colored fashion plates, illustrating how fashion, theater, and politics influenced one another as France constructed a new democracy. The exhibition, curated by Nicole LaBouff, Mia’s Associate Curator of Textiles, will be on view in the Cargill Gallery from 10 September 2022 until 5 March 2023. This exhibition marks the first time these items have been on view.
In a unique pairing, the exhibition showcases fashion plates and musical scores that were published side by side in periodicals for the entertainment and edification of the public. These publications were among the first modern fashion magazines, with the illustrations documenting the fashions that fluctuated with the changing political tides. More than 20 of these fashion plates will be on display, alongside paintings and sculpture that offer context.
In planning for this project, Mia partnered with violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved of London’s Royal Academy of Music and musicologist Rebecca Geoffroy-Schwinden of the University of North Texas to arrange new recordings of these songs long lost to history, which visitors will be able to hear in the gallery and on Mia’s website. Important but understudied contributions by women to the music of this period–uncovered through exhibition research–will be highlighted in the display. [Skærved performed the pieces live at Mia in a public program on October 18.]
“We learn more about the fashion plates and the musical scores by featuring them side-by-side in this exhibition,” said LaBouff. “Most of this music has never been recorded before and we are excited to bring it to life in this exhibition. Clothing and music shape politics from the ground up, and this show offers visitors the chance to understand the atmosphere of Revolutionary France through those lenses.”
The fashion plates and musical scores featured in this show were a gift from the collection of Dwight and Helen Minnich.
New Book | L’autre famille royale: Bâtards et maitresses
From Passés Composés:
Flavie Leroux, L’autre famille royale: Bâtards et maitresses d’henri IV à Louis XVI (Paris: Passés Composés, 2022), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-2379334801, €22.
La faillite de l’absolutisme
Maîtresses et bâtards sont au cœur de l’histoire monarchique et tiennent, à l’avènement de ce qu’on appelle « l’absolutisme », un rôle de premier plan. Mais quel est-il ? Et surtout comment la famille royale peut-elle s’en accommoder alors que sur elle reposent la légitimité et la continuité du pouvoir ? C’est à cette question que Flavie Leroux répond en relisant les règnes des Bourbon, d’Henri IV à Louis XVI. Elle redonne leur place aux maîtresses successives et à leurs enfants, aussi bien dans l’idéologie monarchique que dans la réalité du pouvoir et de la vie de cour. D’abord famille de substitution sous Henri IV, avec Gabrielle d’Estrées et les Vendôme, ils s’imposent ensuite, avec Henriette d’Entragues, Louise de La Vallière ou Mme de Montespan, comme une famille parallèle que le roi garde auprès de lui et impose aux côtés de sa lignée légitime. Cette « contre famille » va concurrencer la « véritable » famille à un point tel que, sous Louis XV puis Louis XVI, c’est la crédibilité du pouvoir des Bourbon qui est mise en péril par cette nouvelle organisation. Entre famille, pouvoir et société, un livre inédit, brillant et décisif sur l’inexorable déclin de la monarchie française avant la Révolution française.
Docteur de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, chargée de recherche au Centre de recherche du château de Versailles, membre associée au Centre de recherches historiques, Flavie Leroux est spécialiste d’histoire de la cour et des femmes en France à l’époque moderne, en particulier des maîtresses royales, auxquelles elle a consacré sa thèse et un ouvrage, Les maîtresses du roi, de Henri IV à Louis XIV (2020).
Versailles Apartment of Mme du Barry Unveiled after Restoration
The suite of fourteen rooms was completed in 1770 under the direction of Ange-Jacques Gabriel. Madame du Barry lived there for five years (1770–1774).
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The newly restored private apartment of Jeanne Bécu, Comtesse du Barry (1743–1793) opened last month in connection with the exhibition Louis XV: Passions of a King. From The Art Newspaper:
Claudia Barbieri, “Louis XV’s Official Mistress Leaves the Shadows, as Restoration of her Versailles Apartment Reveals Secretive Life,” The Art Newspaper (19 October 2022). Madame du Barry, whose life is the subject of a new Netflix film, was born into poverty and sold trinkets on the streets of Paris before joining court circles in her 20s.
François-Hubert Drouais, Portrait of Madame Du Barry, 1769 (Château de Versailles).
In late October 1722, King Louis XV was crowned in Reims cathedral. This month, the Château de Versailles in Paris marks 300 years since the king’s coronation with an exhibition of 400 works and artefacts that reveal the private life of a monarch whose regal lifestyle paved the way for the French Revolution.
But the highlight of the exhibition is the restored chambers of the king’s last official mistress, Madame du Barry, which are fully open to the public for the first time.
Over the past 18 months, and at a cost of €5m, the Parisian restoration specialists Ateliers Gohard—known for restoring the Statue of Liberty’s torch—have painstakingly renovated the 18th-century decor of Du Barry’s home by gradually stripping away layer upon layer of paint to reveal the colours the king’s mistress chose. . . .
Du Barry was famed for her patronage of artists and craftsmen. But, after her death, her possessions were scattered through the Paris sale rooms. Most have never been recovered. An approximation of her chambers will soon be used in a Netflix-produced film adaptation of her life, with the US actor Johnny Depp playing King Louis XV and the French actor Maïwenn playing Du Barry [Maïwenn also directs the film]. Shooting is currently taking place at locations in and around Versailles.
The full article is available here»
Furniture History 2022
Wenfangtu, detail, ca. 1750, China, coloured woodblock print, 110 × 50 cm
(Stockholm: Nordiska Museet)
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The long eighteenth century in the latest issue of Furniture History, from The Furniture History Society . . . I would particularly note the the article by Kee Il Choi, Jr, which identifies a category of Chinese woodblock prints (wenfangtu / 文房圖) as graphic source materials for marquetry panels of French furniture, especially pieces from the early 1770s—an alternative to the traditional assumption of carved Coromandel (kuancai) lacquer screens. In addition to being an ‘origins’ story, it’s fascinating material as the prints themselves raise myriad rich questions (wenfangtu are now known only from examples outside of China). –CH
Furniture History 58 (2022)
A R T I C L E S
• Christopher Rowell, “The Carved Room at Petworth Revisited and Grinling Gibbons as an Auctioneer, Dealer, and Collector,” pp. 39–128.
• Kee Il Choi, Jr , “From Lieux to Meubles: Chinese Woodblock Prints and French Marquetry of the 1770s,” pp. 129–156.
• Irene Alessandra Meneghetti, “Transfer Printing on Wood: Research and Replication Based on Two Side Tables Attributed to Joseph Schneevogl,” pp. 157–174.
• Sarah Medlam, “Fit for a Prince: Seddon’s Cradle for Shiloh, the Prince of Peace, the Expected Child of Joanna Southcott, 1814,” pp. 175–198.
• Rufus Bird, “John Girdwood: A Modern Edinburgh Antiquary,” pp. 199–226.
A satinwood and marquetry secrétaire à abattant with gilt-bronze ormolu mounts, ca. 1775, France; stamped: René Dubois (maître, 1754–99), 137 × 84 cm (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 705.a-i-D4).
Panel Discussion | Revisiting Kubler’s The Shape of Time
From the BGC:
Reading The Shape of Time, 60 Years Later
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 30 November 2022, 6pm
Four perspectives on the seminal text by George Kubler from BGC faculty Meredith Linn, François Louis, Aaron Glass, and Drew Thompson, moderated by Joshua Massey and Jeffrey Collins.
In 1962, Yale University art historian George Kubler published The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, a book that challenged traditional notions of style and period in art history. Now, 60 years later, we bring together a historian, an anthropologist, an archaeologist, and an art historian—all members of the BGC faculty—to explore The Shape of Time across geographical and disciplinary boundaries and to rediscover the prescient insights it offers for material culture and object-oriented scholarship.
$15 General | $12 Seniors | Free for people with a college or museum ID, people with disabilities and caregivers, and BGC members.
Meredith B. Linn is assistant professor of historical archaeology at Bard Graduate Center. She holds a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University, an MA in the social sciences from the University of Chicago, and a BA in art history from Swarthmore College. Her work focuses on nineteenth-century New York City, particularly upon the health-related experiences and strategies of Irish immigrants and upon Seneca Village, the predominantly African American community whose land was taken by the City of New York to construct Central Park. She has published articles about both projects and is currently working on a book about each.
François Louis is professor of Chinese art and material culture at Bard Graduate Center. From 2002 to 2008 he also served as editor-in-chief of the journal Artibus Asiae. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Zurich and has published widely on the visual and material culture of medieval China. Recent publications include Design by the Book: Chinese Ritual Objects and the Sanli Tu and the co-edited volumes Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500–1800 (2012) and Perspectives on the Liao (2013). He is currently working on a history of Liao-dynasty archaeological finds.
Aaron Glass is an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Bard Graduate Center. His research focuses on Indigenous visual art, material culture, media, and performance on the northwest coast of North America, as well as the history of anthropology, museums, and ethnographic representation. Glass’s books include The Totem Pole: An Intercultural History (2010); Objects of Exchange: Social and Material Transformation on the Late Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast (2011); Return to the Land of the Head Hunters: Edward S. Curtis, the Kwakwaka’wakw, and the Making of Modern Cinema (2014); and Writing the Hamat’sa: Ethnography, Colonialism, and the Cannibal Dance (2021).
Drew Thompson is associate professor of Black studies and visual culture at Bard Graduate Center, where he researches and teaches in the areas of African and Black diaspora visual and material culture. Curating exhibitions is a fundamental part of his teaching and scholarship. He recently co-curated Benjamin Wigfall & Communications Village, the first posthumous survey of the Black American artist Benjamin Wigfall, which opened in September 2022 at the Dorsky Museum before traveling to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He is also at work on an exhibition about African metalwork for the BGC Gallery, scheduled for fall 2023. He authored Filtering Histories: The Photographic Bureaucracy in Mozambique, 1960 to Recent Times (University of Michigan Press, 2021) and numerous publications about the history of photography and contemporary art in Southern Africa.
Joshua Massey is a student at Bard Graduate Center, where he studies American material culture and the ways in which objects are transformed into art through critical and creative interventions. His essay, “The World According to Aldwyth,” appears in the exhibition catalogue for This is Not! Aldwyth in Retrospect (2023–24), and he is the editor of Wordsmithing: The Spoken Art of Lonnie Holley, a forthcoming collection written in collaboration with Bernard Herman and Holley himself. In his spare time, Massey writes poetry, practices film photography, and shops for books he has no time to read.
Jeffrey L. Collins is professor of art history and material culture at Bard Graduate Center, where he specializes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and its sphere of influence overseas. He is the author of Papacy and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Rome: Pius VI and the Arts (Cambridge, 2004) and a principal contributor to Pedro Friedeberg (Mexico City, 2009) and History of Design: Decorative Arts and Material Culture, 1400–2000 (New Haven and London, 2013). A fellow of the American Academy in Rome, he has published widely on architecture, urbanism, painting, sculpture, book illustration, museology, metalwork, furniture, and film.
New Book | Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America
From Norton:
Pekka Hämäläinen, Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America (New York: Liveright, 2022), 592 pages, ISBN: 978-163149698, $40.
A prize-winning scholar rewrites 400 years of American history from Indigenous perspectives, overturning the dominant origin story of the United States.
There is an old, deeply rooted story about America that goes like this: Columbus ‘discovers’ a strange continent and brings back tales of untold riches. The European empires rush over, eager to stake out as much of this astonishing ‘New World’ as possible. Though Indigenous peoples fight back, they cannot stop the onslaught. White imperialists are destined to rule the continent, and history is an irreversible march toward Indigenous destruction.
Yet as with other long-accepted origin stories, this one, too, turns out to be based in myth and distortion. In Indigenous Continent, acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen presents a sweeping counternarrative that shatters the most basic assumptions about American history. Shifting our perspective away from Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, the Revolution, and other well-trodden episodes on the conventional timeline, he depicts a sovereign world of Native nations whose members, far from helpless victims of colonial violence, dominated the continent for centuries after the first European arrivals. From the Iroquois in the Northeast to the Comanches on the Plains, and from the Pueblos in the Southwest to the Cherokees in the Southeast, Native nations frequently decimated white newcomers in battle. Even as the white population exploded and colonists’ land greed grew more extravagant, Indigenous peoples flourished due to sophisticated diplomacy and leadership structures.
By 1776, various colonial powers claimed nearly all of the continent, but Indigenous peoples still controlled it—as Hamalainen points out, the maps in modern textbooks that paint much of North America in neat, color-coded blocks confuse outlandish imperial boasts for actual holdings. In fact, Native power peaked in the late nineteenth century, with the Lakota victory in 1876 at Little Big Horn, which was not an American blunder, but an all-too-expected outcome.
Hämäläinen ultimately contends that the very notion of ‘colonial America’ is misleading, and that we should speak instead of an ‘Indigenous America’ that was only slowly and unevenly becoming colonial. The evidence of Indigenous defiance is apparent today in the hundreds of Native nations that still dot the United States and Canada. Necessary reading for anyone who cares about America’s past, present, and future, Indigenous Continent restores Native peoples to their rightful place at the very fulcrum of American history.
Pekka Hämäläinen is Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford University and the author of The Comanche Empire, winner of the Bancroft Prize, and Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power. He lives in Oxford, England.
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