Leo T. reviewed Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory on + 1775 more book reviews
The despoilation of the civilized Indians included interested financial mavens, asserts Dr. Saunt. Recalling the similar fate of the property of the Japanese-Americans in 1942, I myself feel it is a good argument.
I have not yet seen the book, but Caitlin Fitz offers a long essay in The Atlantic, May 2020 ("A Trail of Tears and Money," pp. 80-82).
Fitz: "Two of his principal arguments--that mass expulsion wasn't inevitable and that it was a 'turning point for indigenous peoples and for the United States'--are largely accepted among scholars. His third, that it was administratively 'unprecedented' in American history, invites debate about longer histories of dispossession. But Saunt's greatest contribution is to weld the narrative of deportation to new histories of capitalism that emphasize slavery's centrality to national economic development. He follows the money, exhaustively researching company correspondence and government records to show how bankers in Boston and London financed the dirty work of dispossession in collaboration with southern speculators."
I have not yet seen the book, but Caitlin Fitz offers a long essay in The Atlantic, May 2020 ("A Trail of Tears and Money," pp. 80-82).
Fitz: "Two of his principal arguments--that mass expulsion wasn't inevitable and that it was a 'turning point for indigenous peoples and for the United States'--are largely accepted among scholars. His third, that it was administratively 'unprecedented' in American history, invites debate about longer histories of dispossession. But Saunt's greatest contribution is to weld the narrative of deportation to new histories of capitalism that emphasize slavery's centrality to national economic development. He follows the money, exhaustively researching company correspondence and government records to show how bankers in Boston and London financed the dirty work of dispossession in collaboration with southern speculators."
