Nexus of Empire

by Smith, Gene Allen

• ISBN13: 9780813033990
• ISBN10: 0813033993
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-01-03
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Florida

Summary

"Featuring compelling biographical essays on individuals from the key groups who experienced the rapid shifts in national boundaries in the Gulf region, this work opens an exciting new perspective on the problems of identity and loyalty in a transnational world."-Rafe Blaufarb, author ofBonapartists in the Borderlands "A sparkling set of insightful essays that illuminates the interplay of natives, settlers, maroons, and slaves in a in a pivotal borderland contested by rival empires. Local, imperial, and racial identities overlapped in a shifting kaleidoscope of power, resistance, and adaptation."-Alan Taylor, author ofThe Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution Between 1760 and 1820, many groups in North America grappled with differences of identity, nationality, and loyalty tested by revolutionary challenges. Less dramatic, perhaps, but no less important were the stories of individuals redefining themselves as they struggled to survive and prosper in times of both war and peace. Nexus of Empireturns the focus on the people who inhabited one of the continent's most dynamic borderlands- the Gulf of Mexico region-where nations and empires competed for increasingly important strategic and commercial advantages. The essays in this collection do not focus primarily on national groups or large military conflicts. Instead, they examine the personal experiences of men and women, Native Americans, European colonists, free people of color, and slaves, analyzing the ways in which these individuals defined and redefined themselves amid a world of competing loyalties. With its biographical approach, this volume humanizes the promise and perils of living, working, and fighting in a region experiencing constant political upheaval and economic uncertainties. It offers intriguing glimpses into a fast-changing world in which individuals' attitudes and actions reveal the convoluted balancing acts of identities that characterized this population and this era. [cut this last paragraph for length if necessary]

Author Biography

Gene Allen Smith is professor of history at Texas Christian University and coauthor of Filibusters and Expansionists: Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny, 1800-1821. Sylvia L. Hilton is professor of history at Complutense University of Madrid and coeditor of Frontiers and Boundaries in United States History.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations, Maps, and Tables	p. vii
Changing Flags and Political Uncertainty
Introduction	p. 3
Loyalty and Patriotism on North American Frontiers: Being and Becoming Spanish in the Mississippi Valley, 1776-1803	p. 8
Dilemmas Among Native Americans and Free Blacks
"Like to Have Made a War among Ourselves": The Creek Indians and the Coming of the War of the Revolution	p. 39
Louis LeClerc De Milford, a.k.a. General Francois Tastanegy: An Eighteenth-Century French Adventurer among the Creeks	p. 63
Marie Thérèze dit Coincoin: A Free Black Woman on the Louisiana-Texas Frontier	p. 89
To Strike a Balance: New Orleans' Free Colored Community and the Diplomacy of William Charles Cole Claiborne	p. 113
Dehahuit: An Indian Diplomat on the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, 1804-1815	p. 140
Building Fortunes through Family Connections and Local Community
The Nature of Loyalty: Antonio Gil Ibarvo and the East Texas Frontier	p. 163
Philip Livingston, Chameleon "Premier" of West Florida	p. 183
Oliver Pollock and the Creation of an American Identity in Spanish Colonial Louisiana	p. 198
Bordermakers and Landed Women: The Rouquier Sisters of Colonial Natchitoches	p. 219
Daniel Clark: Merchant Prince of New Orleans	p. 241
Personal Ambition in Government and Military Service
William Dunbar, William Claiborne, and Daniel Clark: Intersections of Loyalty and National Identity on the Florida Frontier	p. 271
"Motivated Only by the Love of Humanity": Arsène Lacarrière Latour and the Struggle for the Southwest	p. 298
Soldier, Expansionist, Politician: Eleazer Wheelock Ripley and the Dance of Ambition in the Early Republic	p. 321
Conclusion	p. 347
Contributors	p. 355
Index	p. 395
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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