West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776

by Claudio Saunt

Overview

This panoramic account of 1776 chronicles the other revolutions unfolding that year across North America, far beyond the British colonies.

In this unique history of 1776, Claudio Saunt looks beyond the familiar story of the thirteen colonies to explore the many other revolutions roiling the turbulent American continent. In that fateful year, the Spanish landed in San Francisco, the Russians pushed into Alaska to hunt valuable sea otters, and the Sioux discovered the Black Hills. Hailed by critics for challenging our conventional view of the birth of America, West of the Revolution “[coaxes] our vision away from the Atlantic seaboard” and “exposes a continent seething with peoples and purposes beyond Minutemen and Redcoats” (Wall Street Journal).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393351156
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/06/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	375,740
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Claudio Saunt is the Richard B. Russell Professor in American History at the University of Georgia. He is the author of award-winning books, including A New Order of Things; Black, White, and Indian; and West of the Revolution. He lives in Athens, Georgia.

Table of Contents

Introduction 11

Prologue: Western Speculation: Henderson's Transylvania Colony 17

Part I The Russians are Coming

Introduction 31

1 Soft Gold: Aleuts and Russians in Alaska 34

2 A War for Independence: The San Diego Uprising 54

3 First Contact: Colonizing San Francisco 72

4 Across the Colorado Plateau 91

Part II The Continental Divide

Introduction 119

5 A Forest Transformed: The Hudson's Bay Company and Cumberland House 124

6 The Discovery: The Blacks Hills and the Lakota Nation 148

7 An Invasion of Malefactors: Osage Country 169

8 Surrounded: The Deep South Interior 188

Epilogue 209

Abbreviations for Works Cited 2 73

Notes 215

Acknowledgments 261

Index 263

Editorial Reviews

"Brilliant."

Seattle Times - Michael Upchurch

"An engaging, original, and thought-provoking book on what was happening on the American continent in 1776 outside of our traditional line of sight. The result is a fascinating new look at the most familiar of years."

Jon Meacham

"[B]old and inclusive…a significant contribution to our understanding of this volatile and formative period in American history."

Chicago Tribune - Doug Kiel

"[A] panoramic view of North America…rife with fascinating facts."

Newsweek - Jacob E. Osterhout

"A history more terrible than wondrous, a necessary counternarrative to our enlightened Revolution…Saunt stretches the scope of his history to provide context and background…He has created a sweeping narrative of noncolonial America in 1776. But he is at his most colorful when he finds individual stories, such as that of the Frenchman floating down the Arkansas River with ‘one severed head and the corpses of two of his companions.’"

Los Angeles Times - Carolyn Kellogg

03/10/2014
This work adds to a growing library of untraditional histories that incorporate everyone who’s had anything to do with the formation of the United States. Saunt, a University of Georgia history professor and noted expert on American Indians, asks a simple question: what was going on around 1776 in the territories that became the U.S.? That is, what’s the story on this continent when you leave out the Revolutionary War, which he scarcely mentions? It turns out that much was going on, and many different peoples—primarily the French, Spanish, Russians, and Native tribes—were involved in the lands west of the Appalachians, contesting for land, power, empire, and riches. The declaration of the colonists’ independence, of huge future significance, was scarcely noticed there. Missionaries, explorers, land-hungry speculators, and scalawags, many of whom most readers will never have heard of, continued their rivalries for faith, country, and self-interest, thus making a stew of ambitions on the North American continent. Saunt’s lively prose highlights the extent of this mess, but unfortunately, it’s hard to know what to conclude from his pastiche, or how it affects our knowledge of the Revolutionary period. Regardless, no one who reads it will think of 1776 the same way again. Maps & illus. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"Perceptive and original."

Wall Street Journal - Gerard Helferich

"A dramatic and compelling new take on the North America of 1776. With careful research and in evocative writing, Saunt brilliantly recovers the cultural diversity and many possibilities of a continent dominated by native peoples and coveted by several empires."

Alan Taylor

"Move over, Minutemen: teeming with Sioux hunters, Creek farmers, Aleutian traders, Russian trappers, and Spanish missionaries, West of the Revolution portrays America in 1776 as we’ve never seen it before. In a vivid narrative sweeping from Alaska to Cuba, Claudio Saunt upends the conventional vision of this moment, oriented around a handful of statesmen in Philadelphia. He enriches this history with travel accounts, material culture, and consistent attention to the natural environment. A revelation."

Maya Jasanoff

"Saunt spins a tale as compelling and awful as a ghost story. Time and again, encounters that begin with transactions—in furs, crops, or religion—end in exploitation, violence, genocide. The vast, unwieldy continent, in Saunt’s masterful portrait, seems itself to be a symbol of ungovernable resistance— a necessary and timely addition to the heroic creation story we celebrate on July 4."

Boston Globe - Kate Tuttle

"Provocative."

Christian Science Monitor - Ed Herschthal

"Highly recommended as a balancing tonic to more conventional Revolutionary books."

Washingtonian - Bethanne Patrick

"What might the American Revolutionary period look like without the Revolution at its center? Claudio Saunt's remarkable book asks this counterintuitive question, and the results are revelatory. Its wide-ranging stories of different North American places and peoples are gems of historical investigation; together they reveal a continent gripped by upheaval, freedom struggles, and the search for new meanings."

Pekka Hamalainen

"An engaging, original, and thought-provoking book on what was happening on the American continent in 1776 outside of our traditional line of sight. The result is a fascinating new look at the most familiar of years."

Jon Meacham

2014-05-07
A multilayered American history of "formative events…occurring not just along the Eastern Seaboard but across all of North America."The year 1776 had enormous repercussions in the West, opening up the land to the exploring Spaniards and rapacious Russians and decimating the Native Americans as well as significant native fauna like otters and beavers. Saunt (American History/Univ. of Georgia; Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family, 2005, etc.) explores what the rest of the continent was up to at the same time that George Washington was forming his Continental Army and Patrick Henry was disclaiming on liberty or death—namely, a rush for land and furs and the pushing out of the Indians in the way. Some of the alarming events included the purchase by speculator Richard Henderson of a whopping 22 million acres of land in what is now Kentucky and Tennessee from the Cherokee leaders for a pittance in a naked grab after British collapse; Capt. Ivan Solovyev and his band of Siberian trappers wreaking havoc on the native Aleuts; and the Spaniards, fearing Russian incursions in California, inciting the displeasure of the native Kumeyaays in the process, while conquistador Juan Bautista de Anza and his exploring party were making first contact with the Costanoan-speaking Indians in the San Francisco Bay. The division of the continent in two along the Mississippi River at the conclusion of the Seven Years' War (1763) allowed some tribes to take advantage of increased trade, while most others straddling the divide were crushed. Saunt ably juggles myriad events—the Hudson Bay Company causing the near extinction of many species of animal, the Lakotas' discovery of the fertile Black Hills—throughout his compelling narrative.A welcome amplification of the American story.

Kirkus Reviews