Hard Neighbors: The Scotch-Irish Invasion of Native America and the Making of an American Identity

Hard Neighbors: The Scotch-Irish Invasion of Native America and the Making of an American Identity - Hardcover

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Hard Neighbors: The Scotch-Irish Invasion of Native America and the Making of an American Identity
  • Hard Neighbors: The Scotch-Irish Invasion of Native America and the Making of an American Identity
Hard Neighbors: The Scotch-Irish Invasion of Native America and the Making of an American Identity - Hardcover

Hard Neighbors: The Scotch-Irish Invasion of Native America and the Making of an American Identity - Hardcover

by Colin G. Calloway
$46.60
$46.60

Book Overview

An intricate portrayal of the early American settlers who came to be known as Scotch-Irish, who through collusion and bloody conflict acted as the tip of the spear for white colonial expansion into Indian lands, embodying what became the American pioneer spirit.

Hard Neighbors highlights stories that have been subsumed by terms such as "English settlers" and "American expansion" and traces shifting relationships involving Scotch-Irish people living on the frontier, neighboring Indian peoples, and more distant governments. It follows the people who came to be known as Scotch-Irish from their genesis on a colonial borderland on one side of the Atlantic to their role in the borderlands of Indian country on the other. It traces their relations with Native Americans over time and across the continent, examines their experiences as marginalized and expendable people living between colonial powers and Indigenous peoples, and demonstrates their roles as protective and disruptive forces on the hard edge of colonialism. The Scotch-Irish fought Indian wars and shaped the frontier, and their experiences living near and fighting against Indians shaped their identity and their attitudes towards government. They influenced national attitudes and policies, and they transformed Indian people into racial others as they transformed themselves into Americans.

The story this book tells is less about the Scotch-Irish as a distinct ethnic group than as a people in motion who, in collusion and conflict with colonial authorities, repeatedly inserted themselves on Native land. Instead of a tale of unified westward expansion, it recovers the experiences, encounters, and humanity of groups of people enmeshed in the violence of colonialism and reconstructs the roles of multiple peoples placed as buffers between competing powers. Expansion, and the accompanying expulsion and killing of Indian people, helped to create American unity and identity and, ultimately, made the Scotch-Irish Americans. Once marginalized as little better than Indians, they reaffirmed their reputation as Indian killers and made a place for themselves in America, as Americans.
ISBN9780197618394
Author Colin G. Calloway
PublisherOxford University Press
GenreNews & politics, History, and Education
FormatHardcover
PublishedDecember 2024
LanguageENG- English
Pages528
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

History Nonfiction Political Science Social Science

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About Colin G. Calloway

COLIN G. CALLOWAY is John Kimball Jr. 1943 Professor of History and Professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College. He is the author of numerous books, including One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark (2003), which won six best-book awards.

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