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
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 and 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

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

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

Brilliant.

Michael Upchurch - Seattle Times

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

Jacob E. Osterhout - Newsweek

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.’

Carolyn Kellogg - Los Angeles Times

[A]s compelling and awful as a ghost story… [A] masterful portrait.

Kate Tuttle - Boston Globe

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

Doug Kiel - Chicago Tribune

Perceptive and original.

Gerard Helferich - Wall Street Journal

Illuminating… readers will walk away from West of the Revolution with an entirely necessary set of characters to fold into the narrative of 1776…. In a global age, this kind of history could not be more welcome.”

Ed Herschthal - Christian Science Monitor

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

Bethanne Patrick - Washingtonian

Revelatory.

Pekka Hamalainen

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. . . . A revelation.”

Maya Jasanoff

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

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