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white male supremacy. As Howe concludes, "'Manifest Destiny' served as both a label and a
justification for policies that might otherwise have simply been called American expansion or
imperialism" (p. 703).
! The first peoples who populate the pages of What God Hath Wrought certainly suffered
from any number of actions taken by the citizens and governments of the United States of
America but they are never just passive victims. Indeed, themes like agency and victimhood are
relics of a passing phase in native historiography, and Howe's treatment of culture, factionalism,
and politics points towards next steps U.S. historians might wish to take. At the same time,
however, he casts first peoples in a way that might also bear future reconsideration and revision
by students of Native North America. The first peoples in What Hath God Wrought are Native
Americans--a racial minority that happened to inhabit lands claimed by the United States and
who had to adapt culturally and politically to the expansion of American society. They are not, in
contrast, insiders like the African Americans in the book who clearly belong to American society
in ways that native peoples did not. In part this reflects free and enslaved African Americans'
position at the center of many political, religious, and cultural debates, but one of Howe's
strengths is that he acknowledges that Native Americans were important players in such debates
as well. No matter the economic or cultural integration first peoples achieved in the nation,
however, in Howe's hands they never quite count as one of the nation's founding peoples.
Instead, they are always on the border fighting to preserve their nations and their lives only to be
expelled or confined like prisoners in a vast armed camp. Perhaps the somewhat awkward fit of
Howe's native narrative within a far more cohesive black/white narrative attests to the lasting
power of the political order and racial ideologies that white men created, and against which
Howe struggles to write, to consign the people they called Indians to the margins of the land they
claimed and the ideas they used to justify their nation's mission.
! In the end, Howe counsels that no one story can be the nation's story. But what makes
What Hath God Wrought remarkable is that it successfully does what a great work of synthesis
ought to do---it distills the broad sweep of multiple fields of inquiry into a comprehensible
narrative of the past that speaks to our present-day concerns. In so doing, Howe raises
significant questions about the place of multiculturalism in United States history and the ways in
which our memories of the past condition our ability to re-imagine it.
James Taylor Carson
Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
*****
Catch up on previous parts of Howe Forum:
INTRODUCTION (Oct. 27)
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-SHEAR&month=0810&week=d&msg=/
eKgyeicCgpYSkmSDVdJng
JAMES HUSTON ON ECONOMIC HISTORY (Oct. 27)
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-
SHEAR&month=0810&week=d&msg=xC7PayA4egD0XIRVNPkdcA