Michael Witgen (Columbia): The Battle for North America: Indigenous Nations and the Birth of the American Empire

The European empires of the Atlantic World established colonies in North America in order to enact the fantasy of discovery. That is, they came to settle and civilize the New World. This European colonial project gave birth to the American republic, the first New World colonial power. Claiming an origin in North America, the Republic came into being as both a colonial power and a nation of settlers. This project, the American experiment in self-governance, began as an extension of the original European colonial project in the western hemisphere. Both the original European colonial scheme, and the one undertaken by the United States, imagined North America as unsettled wilderness, and colonization as a civilizing mission. Framed in this way the expansion of the Republic beyond the original thirteen states into the western interior could be understood as a benign conquest of nature, when in fact it was an audacious imperial project -- a grandiose scheme to steal a continent. However, a theft this bold would require more than a plan that merely called for the colonial subjugation of Native peoples and their land. It would require a totalizing colonial project organized around a political economy designed to plunder Native land and resources, while simultaneously claiming these things as the birthright of the first newly formed, civilized, and post-colonial, American nation-state.  

Michael Witgen is a professor in the Department of History and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. He is a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.  Witgen studies Indigenous and Early American history with a particular focus on the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi Valley. His publications include “An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), and Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America, which was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in history, winner of the James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, the Caughey Prize from the Western History Association, and the state history prize from the Historical Society of Michigan.

This event is provided by the Harvard in 1776 Initiative and is a component of the monthly Department of History seminar. This event is open to the public and a light spread will be provided.

Sponsors:
Charles Warren Center
Harvard University Native American Program
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich