Alaska, Hawaii and the American Nations

Of all the criticisms of the American Nations paradigm I field from people who have not actually read American Nations -- but rather seen the Washington Post or Business Insider summary of the book -- the "why didn't you include Alaska/Hawaii 'cause they're part of America" one is perhaps the most droll.

Yes, I'm aware that Alaska and Hawaii are in the United States, and also that South Florida is as well, and that Newfoundland is part of Canada. As readers of the book know, all of those areas save Alaska are not part of the eleven regional cultures whose history is described in great detail in the book. It's not that they're "not part of the U.S./Canada/North America," it's that for practical purposes it didn't make sense to relate their entire history, given the small and historically recent role they've played in the story of the U.S. and Canada, the real subjects of the book. (For those who are curious, Newfoundland (a self-governing British colony until after World War II) is an Anglo-Irish culture of its own, one predating the other Euro-American nations on the Eastern half of the continent); South Florida is part of a maritime Spanish colonial area with an impressive history all its own, and a culture distinct from El Norte; Hawaii (which joined the U.S. after World War II) is part of the Greater Polynesian cultural region.

Alaska is treated in the book, as it was colonized or settled by the regional cultures American Nations explores. It's shared between a Left Coast area (Juneau and pan handle), a Far Western one (in Central Alaska) and the area still dominated, like Greenland and much of the Canadian Far North, by First Nation.

Thanks to Will Mitchell and Nathan Broaddus at Portland, Maine's NBT Solutions for creating the map from which the image above is drawn.

When the Wabanaki ruled the waves...with European vessels

In this week's Maine Sunday Telegram you'll find my piece on a little-known aspect of early American colonial history: the dominance of the Gulf of Maine and the nearshore waters of the Maritimes by the region's native inhabitants, the Wabanaki, who include the Micmac, Passamaquoddy, Penobscots, and other nations.

The fascinating element: that the very first explorers in the Gulf of Maine encountered Indians using captured European sailing vessels with great skill, and that later colonial fishermen and mariners would find themselves on the losing end of maritime raids by Indians using both native and European vessels.

The essay is occasioned by a new and somewhat flawed academic paper in the Journal of American History -- one that tries to place the Wabanaki story within the "hot" academic field of Atlantic World studies, arguing that the tribes had geopolitical ambitions to block the creation of the British mercantile world. As you'll see in the piece, that's rather a stretch, but the topic at hand is a fascinating one.