The frontier was a myth, manifest destiny a crime

May 12, 2019 8:26 AM

Historians have largely discarded the lie that the “frontier” was an empty Eden waiting for American expansion—but not David McCullough. When the title of popular-history stalwart David McCullough’s latest book—The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West—was first announced, history Twitter heaved a collective sigh. American historians who take a critical approach to the past have been struggling to strip the glamour from the myth of the “frontier” for decades now....Unfortunately, the book is exactly as advertised. When it comes to representing “pioneers” as isolated and hardworking idealists fighting off “threats” from residents of the land they are taking, this book...is a true throwback. Its success (it is No. 10 on Amazon’s best-seller list for books, as of Friday) shows how big the gap between critical history and the “popular history” that makes it to best-seller lists, Costco, and Target remains.

The problem with popular history books is that a lot of them are regressive throwbacks. We now have a much more nuanced view of western expansion, but that doesn't sell books to the masses. Of course, in this hagiography of the Ohio "pioneers", there is a conspicuous absence.

The marketing material for The Pioneers stresses the idea that people won’t have “heard of” the main characters and episodes in this book, and that this “unknown” quality makes the book interesting. But the real “people we haven’t heard of” are the Shawnee, Miami, Wyandot, and other Native peoples who, at the beginning of The Pioneers’ narrative action, had already weathered decades of white incursion, come together in confederacies and alliances, moved from place to place, and fiercely debated among themselves what was to be done.

posted by Homo neanderthalensis (47 comments total)

Oy.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:32 AM on May 12, 2019 [10 favorites]

History is written by the winners.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:33 AM on May 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

And sometimes rewritten by their descendants.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:40 AM on May 12, 2019 [7 favorites]

History is written by the winners.

Only popular history, in this case. As the Slate article notes, McCullough had to ignore decades of academic history in order to write this book. Instead of looking at a lot of really interesting scholarship that sees the American West as a site of conquest, power, and intercultural negotiation and exchange, he reverts to a basically nineteenth-century narrative that accepts a bunch of rich white guys' insistence that they're the protagonists and heroes of a story about taming an empty wilderness. It's dumb and it's lazy, and anyone who has anything to do with this book should feel ashamed.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:41 AM on May 12, 2019 [95 favorites]

Stephen Ambrose, historian and sometime plagiarist, wrote Undaunted Courage, a panegyric to Meriwether Lewis and the Lewis and Clark expedition. Ambrose is clearly in love with his subject. Yet the thoughtful reader can't help but observe that Lewis was an uneducated rich boy who mistreated Native Americans (and ironically, was rescued by them). A miserable leader, a hunting trophy collector, a corrupt governor and an inept suicide. And yet, weirdly, despite the facts he lays before the reader, Ambrose never seems to see through his idol and persists in the mythology of the Great American Frontiersman.
posted by SPrintF at 8:56 AM on May 12, 2019 [14 favorites]

The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West

The guys at the American Legion aren't going to buy as many copies of a book called "The Invaders: The shocking story of the how your ignorant, racist relatives thieved and murdered their way across North America (and should give it back now)"
posted by pracowity at 8:57 AM on May 12, 2019 [73 favorites]

history's an ongoing argument. There have always been popular and stupid arguments.
posted by philip-random at 9:03 AM on May 12, 2019 [5 favorites]

I assume this thing is being timed for Father's Day, because it's definitely a dad book. I really want someone to make a list of alternative books about the US West that are readable and enjoyable but that won't feed into your dad's inaccurate, white-supremacist ideas US history. Something for the Twitter historians to get on, I think.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:20 AM on May 12, 2019 [28 favorites]

Little Big Man is fiction but it satisfies all those concerns.
posted by philip-random at 9:31 AM on May 12, 2019 [9 favorites]

Ugh. I went through a 'revisit Laura Ingalls Wilder's ouvre and existence' phase last summer (maybe not a little because I was in the process of moving west). There is a lot of excellent writing deconstructing/correcting her myth and her life, and it feels particularly...just ugh to see that utterly fail to spread much beyond her and her books.

Anyway, I'm excited to find books in the vein of what ArbitararyAndCapricious is requesting (thanks phillip-random!) because it's something I'd like to dive into, just, I'd rather dive into it accurately.
posted by kalimac at 9:59 AM on May 12, 2019 [8 favorites]

Pandering to racist white colonialists in America is a proven strat in many, many markets. If you have no soul, why not cash in on it?
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:47 AM on May 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

History is written by the winners.

History is written by the writerly. Thucydides, Josephus, crusader memoirs, any French book on Napoleon, a bunch of Confederate memoirs, any American writer on Vietnam - all on the short straw end.

Historical myth, what most people remember and embrace, is a more slippery proposition. And it changes over time. I regret I will not be able to read the books written two hundred years from now.
posted by BWA at 10:49 AM on May 12, 2019 [19 favorites]

I regret I will not be able to read the books written two hundred years from now.

From Caligula to Trump to the Boiling Sea: History's Blockchain Explained
posted by maxwelton at 12:31 PM on May 12, 2019 [67 favorites]

I recently read How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr, which sounds more like what AbitraryAndCapricious is looking for. While it’s a more general history of the colonies and empire of the United States, it covers a lot of information about the country’s westward expansion, including such topics as the proposed Native American state of Sequoyah. (As well as the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and US’s many overseas bases.) It is also very explicit about the degree to which white supremacy drove many of the decisions about US expansion.
posted by a device for making your enemy change his mind at 12:35 PM on May 12, 2019 [32 favorites]

Business Secrets of the Pharaohs
posted by mmmbacon at 12:36 PM on May 12, 2019 [7 favorites]

the review mentions Autumn of the Black Snake, which seems like a thing I'm gonna give a read
posted by Jon_Evil at 12:38 PM on May 12, 2019 [4 favorites]

I understand, but have never bought into, McCullough's appeal as an historian. On almost every subject I find his histories pale in comparison to others, so i've stopped even considering reading them. It's just a shame that his name will guarantee a broad audience for this latest thing.
posted by OHenryPacey at 1:25 PM on May 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

Ugh. I saw some #twitterstorians talking about a book that I assumed had been published decades ago. This sounds ... awful.
posted by zenzenobia at 1:46 PM on May 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

I really want someone to make a list of alternative books about the US West that are readable and enjoyable but that won't feed into your dad's inaccurate, white-supremacist ideas US history. Something for the Twitter historians to get on, I think.

Richard White’s “It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West”? Probably a bit thick, but select chapters may be good.

Would like to solicit for folks opinions on that book while we’re here.

Thanks
posted by JoeXIII007 at 2:59 PM on May 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

ArbitraryandCapricious, I found Charles C Mann's 1491 eye-opening. It's broader than simply the American West, but it really solidly debunks the Virgin Continent mythology.
posted by basalganglia at 3:37 PM on May 12, 2019 [19 favorites]

You can even go right to the source. My current toilet reading is "My Life on the Plains" by George Armstrong Custer himself. It's astonishing how unselfconscious he was about the fact that he was an utter pinhead (and so gay for Wild Bill!) but entertaining and informative nonetheless -- if you can stomach that fucking Victorian prolixity. As with any first hand testimony you gotta read between the lines, but in this case the spaces between them yawn like the Prairie sky.
posted by klanawa at 4:04 PM on May 12, 2019 [7 favorites]

One of the books on my to-read-soon list might qualify: Greg Grandin, The end of the myth: from the frontier to the border wall in the mind of America.

Here's The New Yorker's review.
posted by mrettig at 4:15 PM on May 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

Re: Immerwahr's book, you can hear a discussion of it on a recent podcast by political scientist and angry leftist Ed Burmila.

Seconding Richard White, although I'm not sure how accessible his doorstopper monographs like Railroaded are. Empire's Tracks is an intriguing sounding history of the West focusing on Native Americans and Chinese railroad workers. I haven't read anything by author Manu Karaka, but I was impressed by a recent radio interview with him.

William Cronon is also a major thinker on the frontier, etc, with a special emphasis on how Americans have thought about nature. His classic essay "The trouble with wilderness" critiques Frederick Turner's idea of the frontier and the way Native Americans were cleared out of our idea of the West. I think it's pretty readable, and I'd say the same for White's writing, but I'm an academic and my sense of other people's standards for readability is probably out of whack.

Anyway, sounds like McCullough is going against decades of work by people like Cronon and White (and more recent work by people like Karaka). Disappointing, if not surprising.
posted by col_pogo at 4:20 PM on May 12, 2019 [11 favorites]

OHenryPacey: "I understand, but have never bought into, McCullough's appeal as an historian. On almost every subject I find his histories pale in comparison to others, so i've stopped even considering reading them."

I thought Truman was a relatively good bio, but he's usually pretty shallow, is my take.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:25 PM on May 12, 2019

No small part of the reactionary bent to pop-history books is that they tend to be written by old white men for old white men. Hard to get a nuanced view when the author and audience are really just trying to was nostalgic about their howdy doody days.
posted by Panjandrum at 7:10 PM on May 12, 2019 [7 favorites]

"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.”

–John Adams.

Yeahyeahyeah. So, McCullough does mention that Meriwether Lewis gave Callender $50 hush money. But, he includes John Quincy's support for the Louisiana Purchase, as well as his father's. As to his biography of Adams, not bad. The bibliography alone is worth reading. He includes a glimpse of Adams view on history itself while he was attempting to write an autobiography.

But I think Adams did have a sense of history. "...But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation, while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world."

-John Adams.
posted by clavdivs at 8:05 PM on May 12, 2019 [13 favorites]

Some interesting discussions broadcast last year on C-SPAN: Impact of Westward Expansion on Native Americans
posted by XMLicious at 9:28 PM on May 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Obi-Wan: "So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view."
Luke: "A certain point of view?"
Obi-Wan: "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."

Of course, McCullough's point of view is wildly racist and genocidal, and it ignores half the story. I expect it will become required reading in some American history classes where this point of view holds sway.
posted by bryon at 10:58 PM on May 12, 2019

Richard White’s “It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West”?

Also maybe A Legacy of Conquest by Patricia Nelson Limerick?
posted by salvia at 12:18 AM on May 13, 2019 [4 favorites]

The whole linked article is really good, totally worth the time to read. I only wish there was more link to the snarky comments that are apparently happening over on twitter related to the book.
posted by salvia at 12:33 AM on May 13, 2019

As the Slate article notes, McCullough had to ignore decades of academic history in order to write this book. Instead of looking at a lot of really interesting scholarship that sees the American West as a site of conquest, power, and intercultural negotiation and exchange, he reverts to a basically nineteenth-century narrative that accepts a bunch of rich white guys' insistence that they're the protagonists and heroes of a story about taming an empty wilderness.

The audience for this book, no doubt, considers all that work to be "trying to rewrite history".
posted by thelonius at 3:33 AM on May 13, 2019 [7 favorites]

I thought Truman was a relatively good bio, but he's usually pretty shallow, is my take.

After reading the John Addams biography, I thought the Truman bio was pretty flat, with not much sense of Truman's interior life. I can't figure out if the flatness of Truman is because Truman himself wrote very few letters or diary entries McCullough could rely on to reconstruct that interior life, or because Truman himself didn't have much of an interior life.

With the John Addams biography, I found it much more enjoyable as a reading experience, although McCullough devotes literally two pages to slavery. McCullough also seems to use the plight of Sally Hemings more to demonstrate Addams's moral superiority to Jefferson, rather than investigate the brutal contradictions of the American Enlightenment.

More than a "historian for dads", I'd just say that McCullough is a "historian for Americans." He represents how many, if not the majority, of Americans actually think about their history.
posted by JamesBay at 8:01 AM on May 13, 2019 [5 favorites]

To borrow heavily and without citation from another phrase, McCullough is the non-historian's idea of what a historian does.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:48 AM on May 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

I dunno, I have slightly less of a problem with someone like this than I do with Professor Naill "I have the biggest boner for Empire" Ferguson, who is a regressive arse who has been given academic cachet.
posted by Vortisaur at 11:18 AM on May 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

The two books that come to mind, in terms of being both popularly accessible and not feeding racist dogma, are 1491 and Collapse.

I know the latter is not uncontroversial, but I think it makes a very strong argument against European exceptionalism. And its explanation, again while I realize it may not beat the reader over and over with The Evils Of Colonialism enough for some folks' taste, makes it pretty clear that it's not because of white people's superior intellect or whatever. That's a pretty big step if someone is coming to it from a blithe assumption that well duh white people took over the world, it's because we're better at civilization. Which is really the default American perspective if you strip away all pretense.

1491 likewise has the potential to be eye-opening, because it makes the case—in a way that I think even someone who is mildly skeptical might be receptive to—that the Americas were filled with sophisticated cultures and civilizations prior to their "discovery" by Europeans. And that those cultures were often wiped out by disease before Europeans had an opportunity to see them (and probably more importantly, engage militarily with them) in anything approaching their full glory, and they were adapted to their environments and raw materials in ways that made their level of sophistication non-obvious (e.g. the extensive use of tensile, rather than compressive, strength in Andean cultures' civil engineering).

But in general I do think there is a gap between academic history and popular history, and it's probably incumbent on the academic community to make their work more accessible to a general audience if they want more people to engage with and appreciate it. Disciplines that don't do that, do so at their peril. With undergraduate enrollments declining, it seems like a real concern.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:50 AM on May 13, 2019 [4 favorites]

I have slightly less of a problem with someone like this than I do with Professor Naill "I have the biggest boner for Empire" Ferguson, who is a regressive arse who has been given academic cachet.

Me too, but I wouldn't piss on Niall Ferguson if he was on fire.

Re: Collapse, Jared Diamond is an unapologetic geographical determinist, which has pretty racist implications, despite his protestations that calling him that is a kneejerk dismissal of geographic considerations.

It's a silly appeal to authority, but I happen to know a number of geographers (both cultural and physical) AND historians, all of whom think JD is full of shit.
posted by aspersioncast at 2:34 PM on May 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

I found this twitter thread by Andrew Wehrman, who is a history professor who used to work at Marietta College, to be interesting. He specifically talks about what this book will likely mean to that area and the why of this particular bit of bad history, without sanctioning it.
posted by JustKeepSwimming at 3:40 PM on May 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

As Kadin2048 said "1491" by Charles Mann
posted by DJZouke at 4:59 PM on May 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

sorry, that should be "geographic determinist."
Also 1491 is great.


posted by aspersioncast at 5:18 PM on May 13, 2019

I know many geographers who don't think JD is full of shit. I'm one of them. So... there?
posted by klanawa at 7:52 PM on May 13, 2019 [3 favorites]

(That is to say that, if you don't accept that place and space have some material influence on the way things are, in what sense are you a geographer?)
posted by klanawa at 8:28 PM on May 13, 2019

This looks like an interesting critique of Collapse.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:04 AM on May 14, 2019

Cronon is also really good.

Re: Diamond derail, there are enough readily-available critiques of his work that if you're interested you'll find them, and a search of old threads will turn up some good ones. Happy to switch to MeMail if you want some recs or feel inclined to defend him to a detractor.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:49 AM on May 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

I first heard about 1491 here in the blue, and it's a fantastic read. Essential for anyone living in North America!
posted by chaz at 9:57 AM on May 14, 2019

Fifithingly 1491.
Also, 1421, by Menzies.

Dunno, history 101 usually teaches that America is guilty of genocide, does not as much in how American politics/culture buried-justified said actions. On a legislative line of historical inquiry sure, but as to the cultural devastation that continues today, not as much and on such opinion, I hope I'm wrong. perhaps curricula today better address' said events.
posted by clavdivs at 1:20 PM on May 15, 2019

Menzies is a crank.
posted by inire at 2:58 AM on May 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

> I found this twitter thread by Andrew Wehrman, who is a history professor who used to work at Marietta College, to be interesting. He specifically talks about what this book will likely mean to that area and the why of this particular bit of bad history, without sanctioning it.

Thread Reader unroll.
posted by homunculus at 8:23 PM on May 27, 2019 [2 favorites]