American History:The settlement and conquest of the American continent has long been recognised as a central theme of American history. In 1893, American historian Frederick Jackson Turner would remark, "Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West".
Free land, interaction with what Turner called "primitive society," and constant expansion distinguished the United States from other nations.
This view of American history has more recently faced significant revision, as historians emphasised the importance of looking at the peoples whom expansion displaced or marginalised, as well as the more triumphalist aspects of Turner's vision of American history, in which the frontier more or less shaped the United States into a successful democracy. Even still, it is undeniable that expansion remains a central theme of American history, often in the face of concerted opposition from peoples who were, understandably, none too keen on being subjugated, annihilated, driven off, or some combination of all three.
These two recent books look at the process of European and Euro-American expansion in North America. Benjamin Woolley's Savage Kingdom looks at the Virginia colony, the first permanent English settlement in North America, in its infancy, the early 1600s, while Blood and Thunder, by Hampton Sides, focuses on the American subjugation of New Mexico's Hispanic and American Indian population in the mid-1800s.
Woolley's book is, of the two, the more focused. In part, this is due to a somewhat smaller cast of characters. Indeed, the English colonists in Virginia number in the hundreds for the bulk of the narrative, which runs from the formation of the Virginia Company, the group responsible for the colony's initial settlement, in 1606, into the early 1620s. Much of what the historian of the United States associates with the colony of Virginia is largely absent.
Tobacco, the cash crop that would assure Virginia's long-term economic viability as a colony, makes its first appearance roughly halfway through the book, and the slave trade, which would, by the late 1600s, provide the bulk of the work force on the tobacco plantations, only makes a couple of fleeting appearances toward the end.
Instead, we see the colony in its infancy, suffering from governmental indifference, as well as a leadership, most famously including Capt John Smith whom Pocahontas so famously saved when he fell into the hands of local American Indians, that seemed to fall into intense factional struggle on both sides of the Atlantic at the slightest pretext. The colony, for most of its early years, was a money-loser, and was, on more than one occasion, almost reduced to starvation. By focusing on the early years, Woolley reminds us that, in spite of colonialism being a worldwide phenomenon, its early steps were often precarious and its early manifestations frequently quixotic. The colony of Virginia did not survive its early years because of the sagacity of its leadership or the viability of their initial plans. Instead, the colony survived by quick thinking, dumb luck, and perseverance in what often seemed a doubtful enterprise. The later history, though, with the increasing presence of slave labour and the solidification of the plantations system is the main story of Virginia in the 1600s, and one almost feels as if the story has ended before the beginning of the main act.
SIDES'S BLOOD AND THUNDER concerns a far later phase of conquest - and in more ways than one, since the American conquest of New Mexico in the 1840s and its aftermath took place in a land that had previously been a part of the Spanish Empire and then Mexico. The narrative centres on the life of Kit Carson, a bandy-legged, illiterate explorer, trapper, and soldier whose storied life brought him into close contact with the three broad groups in the region - the Americans (Carson was born in Missouri), the Spanish-speaking New Mexicans (Carson's wife, Josefa, was one of their number, and he converted to Catholicism when he married her), and the American Indians, with whom Carson at various times traded and fought.
Sides is a vivid writer, able to capture a scene in colourful prose and narrate the series of events that form the narrative of the book, from pitched battles in the Mexican-American War to the internecine struggles between the New Mexicans and the Navajo tribe to the often brutal suppression and relocation of many American Indians, in language that is often compelling and moving. But sometimes Sides can stray into mawkishness, harping on such themes as the superstitious aspects of Navajo belief and the more rustic aspects of Carson's speech and behaviour in what seems to be an attempt to keep his narrative colourful. In addition, the use of Carson's life as a unifying strand allows Sides to explore several decades of the history of the Southwest, but too often with the result that the book feels like a collection of time-sequential anecdotes, though generally fascinating ones.
Despite their respective weaknesses, though, both books manage to engage the reader in the often brutal business of European and Euro-American expansion into the New World in the face of the opposition of those for whom the world in question was not "new" at all, but the only home they had ever known.
Quincy Lehr lectures in American history at Trinity College Dublin
Savage Kingdom: Virginia and the Founding of English America By Benjamin Woolley HarperPress, 467pp. £25 Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West By Hampton Sides Little, Brown, 460pp. £20