The Dust Rose Like Smoke

by Gump, James O.

• ISBN13: 9780803270596
• ISBN10: 0803270593
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-01-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

In 1876 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors annihilated Custer's Seventh Cavalry on the Little Bighorn. Three years later and half a world away, a British force was wiped out by Zulu warriors at Isandhlwana in South Africa. In both cases the total defeat of regular army troops by forces regarded as undisciplined barbarian tribesmen stunned an imperial nation. The similarities between the two frontier encounters have long been noted, but James O. Gump is the first to scrutinize them in a comparative context. "This study issues a challenge to American exceptionalism," he writes. Viewing both episodes as part of a global pattern of intensified conflict in the latter 1800s resulting from Western domination over a vast portion of the globe, he persuasively traces the comparisons in their origins and aftermath.

Author Biography

James O. Gump, professor and chair of the Department of History at the University of San Diego, is the author of The Formation of the Zulu Kingdom in South Africa, 1750–1840.

Table of Contents

List of Maps and Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(6)
The Little Bighorn in Comparative Perspective	7	(20)
Frontiers of Expansion	27	(14)
Indigenous Empires	41	(14)
Collaborators of a Kind	55	(18)
Agents of Empire	73	(22)
Patterns of Imperial Overrule	95	(22)
Images of Empire	117	(18)
Conclusion	135	(6)
Notes	141	(20)
Bibliography	161	(12)
Index	173