The Co-optation of Tecumseh: The War of 1812 and Racial Discourses in Upper Canada

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Jarvis Brownlie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The United States ◽  
War Of 1812 ◽  
Upper Canada ◽  
Canadian History ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
History Texts ◽  
Long Poems ◽  
Racial Discourses

The Shawnee leader Tecumseh is one of very few named Aboriginal figures who are accorded a place in Canadian history texts. In the years following the War of 1812, he was claimed by Upper Canadians as a war hero and symbol of the struggle with the United States, a “Noble Savage” whose life and death provided material for nation-building discourses. Through the analysis of two long poems about Tecumseh published in the 1820s, this essay examines the early stages of Upper Canada’s co-optation of Tecumseh as a component of its national identity. The valiant but ultimately savage character the poems depicted could inspire Upper Canadians and remind them of their wartime sacrifices, but he also served to mark off Indigenous people from the Euro-Canadians whose cultural superiority legitimated their possession of the colony’s lands and resources. These literary works produced a “Canadian” hero who could be incorporated as a national symbol for a settlement colony he never set out to defend, and whose massive expansion after his death he would have vigorously opposed.

Deafness and Ethnic Identity: The Idea of a Deaf State and its Resonances with American Exceptionalism and Frontier Ideology

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-90
Author(s):  
Marion Rana
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Deaf Identity ◽  
American Nation

Abstract This article focuses on the nineteenth century as a pivotal time for the development of a Deaf identity in the United States and examines the way John Jacob Flournoy’s idea of a “Deaf-Mute Commonwealth” touches upon core themes of American culture studies and history. In employing pivotal democratic ideas such as egalitarianism, liberty, and self-representation as well as elements of manifest destiny such as exceptionalism and the frontier ideology in order to raise support for a Deaf State, the creation and perpetuation of a Deaf identity bears strong similarities to the processes of American nation-building. This article will show how the endeavor to found a Deaf state was indicative of the separationist and secessionist movements in the United States at that time, and remains relevant to Deaf group identity today.

“[T]his most unnecessary, unjust, and disgraceful war”

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 82-103
Author(s):  
Juhani Rudanko
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
War Of 1812 ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
Sedition Act ◽  
The Face ◽  
Federalist Party

This article focuses on face-threatening attacks on the Madison Administration during the War of 1812. The discussion is framed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, with the language of the Amendment protecting freedom of speech, and also by the Sedition Act of 1798, which, if it had been made permanent, would have seriously curtailed freedom of speech. The War of 1812 was intensely unpopular among members of the Federalist Party, and their newspapers did not shy away from criticising it. This article investigates writings published in the Boston Gazette and the Connecticut Mirror during the war. It is shown that the criticism took different forms, ranging from accusing President Madison of “untruths” to painting a picture of what was claimed to be the unmitigated hopelessness of his position, both nationally and internationally, and that the criticism also included harsh personal attacks on his character and motives. It is suggested that some of the attacks may be characterised as exhibiting aggravated impoliteness. The article also considers President Madison’s attitude in the face of the attacks.

scholarly journals Confronting the North’s South: On Race and Violence in the United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliot Currie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Southern History ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
The Us ◽  
Northern Country ◽  
Structural Roots

More than any other ‘Northern’ country, the United States is distinctive in the degree to which its social, economic, and cultural development has been entwined with the global South from the beginning: and we cannot adequately understand the state of crime and punishment in the US without taking that uniquely ‘Southern’ history into account. In this paper, I sketch some of the dimensions of one crucial reflection of that Southern legacy: the extraordinary racial disparities in the experience of violent death between African-Americans and Whites. These disparities contribute substantially to radically different patterns of life and death between the races, and constitute a genuine social and public health emergency. But their structural roots remain largely unaddressed; and in some respects, the prospects for seriously confronting these fundamental inequalities may be receding.

Political, Military, and Cultural Memoirs in Vietnamese

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-188
Author(s):  
Tuan Hoang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Second Republic ◽  
First Republic ◽  
Positive Assessment ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Ngo Dinh Diem

This chapter discusses how historians view the values and limitations of personal memoirs. It also reviews some of the most important memoirs written in the Vietnamese language by former government and civil society leaders of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN). These memoirs have been published in the United States for many years, but scholars have hardly used them. This chapter's review helps not only to provide a broader context for the testimonies in this volume but also to draw out the major themes in those memoirs that parallel the discussion on the challenges facing nation-building efforts in the republic. These themes include communist violence that explains the harsh anticommunist policies in the early years of Ngô Đình Diệm, contested views of the First Republic, and a generally more positive assessment of the Second Republic. The bourgeois values embraced by the RVN, the chapter points out, drew support from many Vietnamese at the time and are a source of nostalgia for many in Vietnam today.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Homeland Security ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The United States ◽  
Reproductive Politics ◽  
Security Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Control ◽  
Theoretical Foundations

This chapter explores how recent discourses of motherhood and nation are deeply enmeshed and mutually constitutive. I trace a brief history of reproductive politics in the United States, clarifying how the project of nation building has consistently enlisted motherhood and worked to govern women’s reproduction through differential modes of surveillance and control. This chapter provides the historical and theoretical foundations for the book; it notes the precedents to homeland maternity while also elaborating on how contemporary alignments of motherhood and nation are distinct and specific to homeland security culture.

Widening The Scope on the Indians’ Old Northwest

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Todd Hancock
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
War Of 1812 ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Old Northwest ◽  
Full Relief ◽  
Tribal Politics

The northwestern theater of the War of 1812 brought the complex nature of tribal politics and diplomacy into full relief. While the militant, inter-tribal coalition led by Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa was one Indian strategy for reckoning with U.S. territorial expansion, the historiographical focus on the Shawnee brothers and their movement has obscured a range of shifting Indian objectives and strategies for negotiating the wartime upheaval. By closely examining inter-tribal rivalries and coalitions, as well as tensions within Indian polities, we see a broader spectrum of Indian agendas in action during the War of 1812. Those agendas included neutrality, spying for or outright alliance with the United States, and situational Indian participation in the conflict when the British made gains early in the war. Well after Tecumseh’s death, we also see the geopolitical influence of western Indian forces, particularly the Potawatomis, Sauks, and the Sioux, on the conflict. For an era so closely associated with Indian prophecy and millenarianism, pragmatism most often reigned.

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