Cultivating Empire : : Capitalism, Philanthropy, and the Negotiation of American Imperialism in Indian Country / / Lori J. Daggar.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2022 English
• VerfasserIn: Daggar, Lori J.,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Early American Studies
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (264 p.)

Cultivating Empire charts the connections between missionary work, capitalism, and Native politics to understand the making of the American empire in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. It presents American empire-building as a negotiated phenomenon that was built upon the foundations of earlier Atlantic empires, and it shows how U.S. territorial and economic development went hand-in-hand. Lori. J. Daggar explores how Native authority and diplomatic protocols encouraged the fledgling U.S. federal government to partner with missionaries in the realm of Indian affairs, and she charts how that partnership borrowed and deviated from earlier imperial-missionary partnerships.Employing the terminology of speculative philanthropy to underscore the ways in which a desire to do good often coexisted with a desire to make profit, Cultivating Empire links eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century U.S. Indian policy—often framed as benevolent by its crafters—with the emergence of racial capitalism in the United States. In the process, Daggar argues that Native peoples wielded ideas of philanthropy and civilization for their own purposes and that Indian Country played a critical role in the construction of the U.S. imperial state and its economy. Rather than understand civilizing missions simply as tools for assimilation, then, Cultivating Empire reveals that missions were hinges for U.S. economic and political development that could both devastate Indigenous communities and offer Native peoples additional means to negotiate for power and endure.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Introduction -- Part I. Foundations -- Chapter 1. Missionaries and the Making of a New Empire in North America -- Chapter 2. Resurrecting the “Chain of Friendship”: The International Politics of Intercultural Diplomacy -- Part II. Routes -- Chapter 3. Becoming Useful: Speculative Philanthropy, Civilization, and Educational Reform -- Chapter 4. The Mission Complex: The Material Consequences of Civilizing Work -- Part III. Negotiations -- Chapter 5. “A Damnd Rebelious Race”: Native Authority in the Aftermath of War -- Chapter 6. “The Best and Cheapest Way to Get Rid of Them”: Speculative Philanthropy and Indigenous Dispossession -- Chapter 7. “Of Mercy and of Sound Policy Too”: Cultivating American Empire on the Continent and Overseas -- Epilogue -- NOTES -- INDEX -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS