Hard Neighbors

Arguing that what happened on the frontier was as significant to the foundational myth of American democracy as what happened in Philadelphia, Colin Calloway reveals how the Scotch Irish defined that myth, one born of conflict with Indigenous peoples in an ever-receding West and with the expansionism of an imperial East. Anyone who wants to follow the national narrative unspooling under these contending forces over three centuries should read this monumental and masterful account of the American past.

Auteur
Colin G. Calloway is John Kimball, Jr. 1943 Professor of History and Professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1995. He is the author of many books, including The Indian World of George Washington, which won the George Washington Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Texte du rabat

Colin Calloway offers an intricate portrait of the early American settlers who came to be known as Scotch-Irish -- from their origins on borderlands on one side of the Atlantic to their crucial part in conquering borderlands on the other. "Hard neighbors," as they were called, the Scotch-Irish were the tip of the spear of white colonial expansion into Indian lands, earning a reputation first as Indian killers and then as embodiments of the American pioneer spirit.