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Sesationalized painting of Native Americans about to scalp a white woman. The Murder of Jane McCrae by John Vanderlyn, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut

“White People,” Victimhood, and the Birth of the United States

White racial victimhood was a primary source of power for settlers who served as shock troops for the nation.
by Gregory Rodriguez via Contra Mundum on June 9, 2022
Replica of small town

Exploring the Midwest’s Forgotten Utopian Communes

The American Midwest was once a site of radical experimentation for various communitarian groups. What has become of their legacy?
by Evan Malmgren via The Baffler on April 18, 2022
Picture of the statue of Black Hawk.

Remembering Black Hawk

A history of imperial forgetting.
by David R. Roediger via Boston Review on March 1, 2022
Photograph of Sam Chamberlain

Crossing the Blood Meridian: Cormac McCarthy and American History

McCarthy imagined a vast border region where colonial empires clashed, tribes went to war, and bounty hunters roamed.
by Bennett Parten via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 9, 2022
Fort Huachuca in 1894.

The American Maginot Line (Pt. 2)

Exploring the history of U.S. empire through the story of Fort Huachuca – the “Guardian of the Frontier.”
by Alex Aviña via Foreign Exchanges on September 27, 2021
Drawing of the Alamo

How Racism, American Idealism, and Patriotism Created the Modern Myth of the Alamo and Davy Crockett

Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford on the making of a misrepresented narrative.
by Chris Tomlinson, Jason Stanford, Bryan Burrough via Literary Hub on June 22, 2021
Illustration of black calvary officers with a Native American, circa 1874

Is This Land Made for You and Me?

How African Americans came to Indian Territory after the Civil War.
by Alaina E. Roberts via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 26, 2021
A family poses outside their homestead, somewhere out west, in the late 19th century.

How Personal Ads Helped Conquer the American West

That tradition of finding partners in the face of social isolation persists today.
by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie via Atlas Obscura on April 29, 2021
An eagle with a snake in its beak with the words "the eagle of liberty" over it.

Texas Secession: Whose Tradition?

The Texan secessionists are at it again.
by Paul Barba via Muster on April 13, 2021
Picture of the Ingalls family from the TV Series, "Little House on the Prairie."

Laura Ingalls Wilder in the Big Woke Woods

A recent documentary reminds us of her family’s strength and our own weakness.
by Jonathon Van Maren via The American Conservative on February 26, 2021
Book cover for The Two Faces of American Freedom

The Two Faces of American Freedom, Ten Years Later: Part One

On the ten year anniversary of Aziz Rana's book, Henry Brooks interviews him on his influential book and what it might teach us about the legacies of populism.
by Henry Brooks, Aziz Rana via LPE Project on December 14, 2020
Book cover of "Ride the Devil's Herd," featuring a mustachioed man wearing a hat

Wyatt Earp Does Not Rest in Peace

A pair of new books about US Marshal Wyatt Earp are now out. Only one of them shoots straight.
by Allen Barra via Los Angeles Review of Books on August 19, 2020

UVA and the History of Race: The George Rogers Clark Statue and Native Americans

Unlike the statues of Lee and Jackson, these Charlottesville monuments had less to do with memory than they did with an imagined past.
by Christian McMillen via UVA Today on July 27, 2020

Imperial Wars Always Come Home

All empires fall. When they do, the violence and terror they’ve wrought on others has a way of coming back around.
by Patrick Wyman via Perspectives: Past, Present, And Future on July 24, 2020

Slavery, and American Racism, Were Born in Genocide

Martin Luther King Jr. recognized that Imperial expansion over stolen Indian land shaped and deepened the American Revolution’s relationship to slavery.
by Greg Grandin via The Nation on January 20, 2020

Land of the Free

The story of America is precisely the heroic story of pioneers who bring the American ideal again and again to the West.
by Christopher Flannery via Claremont Review of Books on December 13, 2019

The Pervasive Power of the Settler Mindset

More than simple racism, the destructive premise at the core of the American settler narrative is that freedom is built upon violent elimination.
by Nikhil Pal Singh via Boston Review on November 26, 2019

No Man’s Land

In ignoring the messy realities of westward expansion, McCullough’s "The Pioneers" is both incomplete and dull.
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on May 10, 2019

The Myth of the American Frontier

Greg Grandin’s new book charts the past and present of American expansionism and its high human costs.
by Jedediah Britton-Purdy via The Nation on April 1, 2019
An engraving of a boat in the water.

"Interior" by Design

Despite the Interior Department’s name, the agency has played a key role in the construction of American foreign policy and territorial expansion.
by Sam Ratner, Megan Black via Fellow Travelers on March 28, 2019

How Violent American Vigilantes at the Border Led to Trump’s Wall

From the 80s onwards, the borderlands were rife with paramilitary cruelty and racism. But the president’s rhetoric has thrown fuel on the fire.
by Greg Grandin via The Guardian on February 28, 2019
Painting of cavalry with swords drawn heading into U.S.-Mexico War battle.

American Extremism Has Always Flowed from the Border

Donald Trump says there is “a crisis of the soul” at the border. He is right, though not in the way he thinks.
by Greg Grandin via Boston Review on January 9, 2019

Bearing Arms vs. Hunting Bears

The persistence of a mythic second amendment in contemporary Constitutional culture.
by Saul Cornell via The Panorama on June 4, 2018
Hundreds of stampeders’ tents on the Tr’ochëk site and the west bank of the Klondike River (1898).

Historical Mining and Contemporary Conflict: Lessons from the Klondike

The local indigenous population was most affected by environmental change resulting from mining in the Klondike.
by Heather Green via NiCHE on May 2, 2018

Was the Real Lone Ranger a Black Man?

The amazing true story of Bass Reeves, the formerly enslaved man who patrolled the Wild West.
by Thaddeus Morgan via HISTORY on February 1, 2018

How Trump Is Making Us Rethink American Exceptionalism

This past year has shown that the U.S. is far from immune to the forces shaping the rest of the world.
by Joshua Zeitz via Politico Magazine on January 7, 2018
Civil War rifles mounted on wall

The Brutal Origins of Gun Rights

A new history argues that the Second Amendment was intended to perpetuate white settlers' violence toward Native Americans.
by Patrick Blanchfield via The New Republic on December 11, 2017
Caroline and Charles Ingalls

Little House, Small Government

How Laura Ingalls Wilder’s frontier vision of freedom and survival lives on in Trump’s America.
by Vivian Gornick via The New Republic on November 16, 2017
Women with field hockey sticks in a physical education class circa 1920.

How the US College Went from Pitiful to Powerful

In its first century the American higher-education system was a messy, disorganised joke. How did it rise to world dominance?
by David Labaree via Aeon on October 11, 2017

You’ll Never See The Northern Lights

"Blade Runner: 2049" portrays a world that is both more terrifying and duller than the world of the franchise's original.
by Aaron Bady via The New Inquiry on October 8, 2017
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