First published 2024
Colin Calloway examines the Scotch-Irish settlers who served as the cutting edge of white colonial expansion into Native American territories. These people moved from colonial borderlands in one Atlantic region to the frontiers of Indian country in another. Calloway traces their complex relationships with Native peoples, distant colonial governments, and their own precarious position as expendable populations caught between competing powers. The book reveals how these settlers operated through both cooperation and conflict with colonial authorities as they repeatedly moved onto Native lands. Calloway shows how fighting Indian wars and living on contested frontiers shaped Scotch-Irish identity and attitudes toward government authority. He demonstrates how their experiences transformed them from marginalized people barely distinguished from Indians into Americans who defined themselves as Indian killers. The author argues that expansion and the accompanying violence against Native peoples created American unity and identity, ultimately making the Scotch-Irish into Americans through their role in colonial violence.
Genres: historical-fiction, military-history, native-american, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Native American Territories, Colonial Borderlands
Period: Colonial Era
528 pages · Hardcover · Oxford University Press
Content warnings: colonialism, violence