America's Hundred Years' War
America's Hundred Years' War
U.S. Expansion to the Gulf Coast and the Fate of the Seminole, 17631858
"These essays explore the context and meaning of the three Seminole Wars in a way that illustrates how the conflicts intersected the mainstream of American history. America's longest wars truly impacted the country's national development."—Gene Allen Smith, coeditor of Nexus of Empire: Negotiating Loyalty and Identity in the Revolutionary Borderlands, 1760s-1820s
"This book makes several important contributions to the history and ethnohistory of the Seminole Wars. This may be the first time a book has placed the wars with the Seminoles in such detailed American political context."—Gregory A. Waselkov, author of A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813-1814
Conventional history narratives tell us that in the early years of the Republic, the United States fought three wars against the Seminole Indians and two against the Creeks. However, William Belko and the contributors to America's Hundred Years' War argue that we would do better to view these events as moments of heightened military aggression punctuating a much longer period of conflict in the Gulf Coast region.
Featuring essays on topics ranging from international diplomacy to Seminole military strategy, the volume urges us to reconsider the reasons for and impact of early U.S. territorial expansion. It highlights the actions and motivations of Indians and African Americans during the period and establishes the groundwork for research that is more balanced and looks beyond the hopes and dreams of whites.
America's Hundred Years' War offers more than a chronicle of the politics and economics of international rivalry. It provides a narrative of humanity and inhumanity, arrogance and misunderstanding, and outright bloodshed between vanquisher and vanquished as well.
This volume is necessary reading for any scholar of southeastern Native Americans, those interested in Florida history, and an excellent case study of the complex consequences of American expansion and Manifest Destiny.’—Southern Historian
Will be of interest to historians of the borderlands, American expansion, Native Americans, and the Gulf Coast and Southeast during the early republic and antebellum periods.’—Journal of the Early Republic
A valuable contribution to the literature and certainly achieves its objective of highlighting America’s Hundred Years’ War.’—The Journal of Southern History
Largely historical in scope and approach and is successful in placing this relatively small-scale history on the national and international stage. The scholarship of Florida history desperately needs this approach, and William Belko’s book serves this cause very well.’—Florida Historical Quarterly
Provides scholars and avocational historians with useful, important insights into U.S. expansion in the South, an area often overshadowed by the settlement of the West.’—The Chronicles of Oklahoma
A compelling argument for a re-examination of the Gulf region’s complex history. America’s Hundred Years’ War does an excellent job of pointing out the myriad of political, racial, and cultural influences that shaped the era’s development in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.’—War in History
William S. Belko is assistant professor of history at the University of West Florida and the author of The Invincible Duff Green: Whig of the West.
