Independence Lost

May 4, 2015
Focusing on the frontier struggle in the Gulf of Mexico region, DuVal (The Native Ground), a historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, illustrates how multipronged the American Revolution was. It involved three empires (Britain, France, and Spain), several major Native American peoples, and both free and enslaved Africans. DuVal personalizes the conflict by tracing the fates of eight individuals: two tribal leaders, a loyalist couple, a merchant couple backing the colonists, a transplanted pro-colonist Acadian, and a slave who served as a cattle driver and later as a courier for the Spanish. She argues that the American struggle was almost a sideshow to “the real war... between Britain and its French and Spanish enemies.” Her eye-opening discussion of diverse Native policies reveals, for example, that the Chickasaw adhered to a policy of strict neutrality while the Creek resisted the colonists’ expanding settlements and achieved a measure of “interdependence” with Spain. By the mid-1780s, the Americans had moved from seeing Natives as sovereign people with treaty rights to mere inhabitants with “no independent sovereignty.” DuVal’s fine scholarship and colorful
presentation reveals that, as the European colonists won independence, they deprived many others of power, autonomy, homelands, and prosperity. Agent: Jill Kneerim, Kneerim Williams & Bloom.

May 1, 2015
An informative and disturbing account of a little-known campaign during the Colonial rebellion. Invited to the First Continental Congress in 1774, the British colony of West Florida declined, remaining loyal until conquered by Spanish forces in 1781. "The American Revolution on the Gulf coast is a story without minutemen, without 'founding fathers, ' without rebels," writes DuVal (Early American History and American Indian History/Univ. of North Carolina; The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent, 2006). "It reveals a different war with unexpected participants, forgotten outcomes, and surprising winners and losers....On the Gulf Coast...the Revolution seemed to be just another imperial war, another war fought for territory and treasure." The author builds her story around a handful of participants. Revolutionary leaders dealt with Oliver Pollock, a wealthy New Orleans businessman who bankrupted himself supporting the revolution, as well as Payamataha and Alexander McGillivray, spokesmen for Chickasaw and Creek tribes. Less well-known are Petit Jean, a slave, and Amand Broussard, a refugee from French Canada. Both helped Spain (who ruled New Orleans) when it joined France to aid the Colonies. Representing Britain was James Bruce, an official in Pensacola, the capital of West Florida. Popular histories trumpet American rage at taxation, but more probably raged at Britain's proclamation forbidding settlers west of the Appalachians. Despite ongoing incursions into their territory, Indians continued to focus on tribal rivalries and trade. Readers will share DuVal's frustration at their leaders' futile efforts to deal with whites. The colonies won, but few readers will feel patriotic pride as the author describes how, over the next generation, the U.S. harassed Spain until it ceded Florida and brutally expelled the Indians from their lands. An illuminating history of events, many barely mentioned in history books and none, unlike our Revolution, with happy endings.

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Starred review from May 1, 2015

Declaring that the American Revolution was fought in the name of empire almost seems blasphemous. However, DuVal (history, Univ. of Carolina, Chapel Hill; The Native Ground) excellently details how the event was actually a war for empire along the Gulf Coast of the United States. The author addresses how French, Spanish, British, and American forces contested the region for economic and military dominance between the 1760s and 1790s, noting how traders, Native Americans, and even slaves were shaped by this contest of empires. By describing these lives and how the revolution affected them, DuVal accurately theorizes that independence was lost by many, and that the idea of "empire" was often a place of security and affluence. This book adds to the literature of the period, fitting nicely with Colin G. Calloway's The American Revolution in Indian Country, Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy's An Empire Divided, and Claudio Saunt's West of the Revolution. VERDICT Highly recommended for students and scholars of the revolution, American South, borderlands, and forgotten theaters of war; along with those looking for a solid read in history. [See Prepub Alert, 1/5/15.]--Jacob Sherman, John Peace Lib., Univ. of Texas-San Antonio

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Starred review from June 1, 2015
The American War of Independence was fought to gain political independence from Great Britain. For some, it was a struggle to create a government respecting and protecting the natural rights of free citizens. But the struggle was also a sometimes-savage civil war that pitted rebels against loyalists who wished to maintain their links to Britain. Like other civil wars, this one divided families, friends, and social classes, and those who supported either side often did so for reasons having little to do with the broader ideological or political issues. DuVal teaches American history at the University of North Carolina. In concentrating on the region of the Gulf Coast of Florida, she has provided a wonderful, engrossing, and often sad examination of how the conflict affected a variety of groups and individuals living on the fringes of the conflict. Florida, of course, was not one of the 13 colonies (or states), but it did not lay outside of the military struggle as British and Spanish forces (allied with the American rebels) clashed while each side sought to win the allegiance of the diverse population. DuVal provides a special intimacy and poignancy by describing the experiences of several individuals, including a pro-British slave, a Chickasaw leader who insisted upon neutrality, and a New Orleans merchant who championed the rebel cause. This is a masterful and provocative glimpse at a seldom-viewed aspect of the glorious cause. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)