This is generously supported by the Library Company of philadelphia and the pew center for arts and heritage. We spent the week tossing around ideas about how we might redraw Early American History. We tried to do that by suggesting one productive way of redrawing that history is to think in terms of a complicated and ever shifting set of contests among three sets of actors. Three sets of actors we call native people, settler colonists, and european empires. It is probably obvious to folks what we mean when we think about native peoples, although it should not be that obvious, except to stress it is a plural term. We are talking about many different peoples who have many different histories and are constantly in historical motion. European empires may be obvious, but once again it is a plural term. We are talking about the french, the dutch, the spanish, the english, and occasionally some other powers. Those empires were in motion. Theyre being created in the period we are talking about. It is a complicated set of things. We have also been talking about the technical use of the term settler and settler colonists. I wonder if i might embarrass somebody in our room among these wonderful teachers to try to take a crack at defining what we mean by settler colonists in this threepart mix. It is the theory the settlers believed the land they arrive to belonged to them and not the native people so they had a right to be on that land and the native people could be erased. Right, and that is a historical product. There may be some people who came to north america from europe or elsewhere with the idea in their head this land already belonged to them. One of the things weve been trying to think about in redrawing Early American History is to find ways of seeing how people come to see their own rights to owning this land as something involved with their position in north america as farmers, men as head of families, who come to see they have a right to this land, and in a weird way, that land never did belong to native americans, it belongs to them. That too is something we have to explain as a historical process. Weve been trying to think in terms of these three parties. European empires, native peoples, settler colonists. We have talked about how, through a long period of struggle and controversy through the 17th and early 18th century, sometime around 1720 a rough balance of power was achieved between those three forces, between the empires, the settler colonists, and the native peoples. Always unstable, always hard to maintain, always multiple and in different directions, again we are talking about a multitude of native peoples. Talking about various settlers from various perspectives, various empires. A rough balance of power was achieved by about 1720. That balance has several aspects to it. One of the important things to help us understand this threeway struggle, one of the important things was summed up by the governor of virginia in the early 1720s, who said, a governor of virginia has to steer between a rock and a hard place, either an indian or a civil war. What he meant by that is it is always the job of representative of the empire to try to mediate between the desire of settler colonists to conquer more land, to get the native peoples out of , and the fact that if a governor tries to restrain that, he might have a civil war on his hands because the people will rebel against him. The threeway struggle involves imperial representatives trying to keep a balance of power between native people and settler colonists, to keep them from fighting each other, but also to keep them from rebelling against the imperial power who was trying to keep the peace. It is a delicate thing. How much do i let people expand, how much do it right try to coerce native people into moreing to let more and land go into settler hands. How much do i worry that if i do not do that, my own people will start rebelling against me . So i think one of the things we are trying to say as Early American History is not a two way set of struggles between europeans and native peoples, it is often a threeway struggle among the european imperial powers, their own settler colonists, and native people. Peoples. That is one rough balance that is achieved by the 1720s or so. The governor virginia is recognizing it here. A governor of virginia has to steer between a rock and a hard place, either an indian or a civil war. Another kind of balance is being maintained, which was noticed by the new york Indian Affairs secretary in 1751. He said, to preserve the balance between us that is the british and the french is the great ruling principle of the modern indian politics. Preserving the balance is what native people are also trying to do. He also used this phrase, which was partly in a way that europeans are so good at doing, a kind of insult and complement at the same time. I am sure when he talked about the modern indian politics, he was saying it is what these people are doing today it is insulting to say the modern indian politics. I would like to turn that phrase around and use it as a marker of historical change among native communities. These are modern, 18thcentury people who have come to understand what they are dealing with in the terms of the balance of power with the european empires in the european settlers. In that sense, we can talk about another balance, native people s trying to maintain the balance between the empires, trying to keep their options open and preserving their autonomy and Political Authority through navigating a complicated Imperial World in which the european empires are being managed by native powers, trying to keep the balance of power between them. That has been the framework we have tried to develop this week. We have also talked about how in the middle of the 18th century, those balances got upset and the events that led up to and culminated in what we car in the in what we call the seven years war, or what colonists like to call the french and indian war. That french and indian war name reflects beautifully the settler colonist idea, because who was absent . There are no settler colonists or british. The war is a war against the indians and the french, and it reflects in the eyes of settler colonists a hope they are achieving the goal of getting both the other empire and the native people out of the way so they can take over the continent. What led to the upset of the balance of power . Many complicated causes, but if there is one thing we want to point to, it is the massive growth in british settler colonist population through the early 18th century. In 1650, there are 55,000 settler colonists in the english colonies. By 1700, that has increased more than five times, to 265,000. By the eve of the seven years war, 1,206,000 colonists, including almost a quarter of a million enslaved africans. One of the things settler colonial theory points out is you replaceence, the indigenous labor other empires might have tried to mobilize with imported labor, either with indentured servitude or enslaved africans, increasingly. All of these people are conceiving themselves of creating an empire of settler colonists replacing the native population or erasing the native population and replacing it with this new form of settler colonialism. By the eve of the American Revolution, 2. 25 million settler colonists. One of the important things about seeing this chart, among other things, is you can get a sense of the growing British Population, the growing demand for land that goes along with that. Also, the growing importance of north america and a British Empire that used to be centered in the caribbean. By the period we are talking about, the vast majority of british colonists now live in north america, not in other places in their empire. Another way to conceive of this is to think in terms not just of population numbers, but land occupied through these periods. We look at 1675, the english settler population is confined to a remarkably small area of the landscape, mostly along the coast and along a few rivers into the interior. By 1725, considerable expansion. By the eve of the seven years war, in 1755, that British Population has pushed against the mountains, the appellation mountains, the Appalachian Mountains, and is poised to go into the interior. If there is an origin to the upset of the balance of power in north america by the middle of the 18th century, it is a relentless pressure of british colonists for more and more land and space to put into agricultural production, to replace native people with english farmers, with german farmers, with scots irish farmers, with enslaved african labor, and to push farther and farther into native territory in order to achieve those goals. By the middle of the 18th century, much of this competition has come to focus on a particular part of the landscape, which people in the 18th century called the ohio country, roughly the area centered around what is today pittsburgh and into the states of western pennsylvania, ohio, indiana, and points adjacent. These places are where british settler colonists and the British Empire have their sights set for the next place in which theyre going to expand. It also happens to be the place where native peoples, many of whom have already been pushed out of their homes farther east, have been migrating for a generation. People like shawnee and delaware. All of whom are determined to maintain their access to the land and not allow them to be dispossessed again. It is also a territory the french have long claimed, aspirationally at least, to be part of their empire. By 1750, native peoples and these two major empires, and the colonists of britain are all coming to focus on this particular region of the ohio country as the focus of all of their energy and activity in terms of their view of the future of north america. Those things have become utterly incompatible goals. Everybody wants the same spot of land. The settler colonists, the native peoples, the empires, all of them fighting among themselves for control of that space. This becomes the place where the great conflict of the seven years war is ignited. Fast forwarding, making an extremely long story very short, the British Empire and its british colonists briefly come to believe, in 1763, that the entire continent has been conquered, the french have been expelled, the spanish have been confined to west of the mississippi, and in british minds, both British Imperial mind and british colonist minds, native people have not been erased from the landscape, but they have been conquered in this thing british colonists like to call the french and indian war. All of the land now belongs to britain. A massive british flag planted across that expanse of north america. That dream lasts about five seconds. It continues to be embodied in our maps like this that show the british conquest of north america in the seven years war, but of course native people have other ideas, and one of the results of that is a connected but decentralized set of wars that we conveniently lumped together as pontiacs war from 1763 to 1765, in which native people rose up against the british throughout this territory the british claim to have conquered, and if nothing else proved to them they remain a huge part of this balance of power between british colonists, the British Empire, and native people. What results is a reestablishment of a balance embodied in the british policy known as the proclamation of 1763, which at least in theory draws a line down the Appalachian Mountains and says british people must remain east of those mountains. The area in the interior are lands reserved for indians. Which is an interesting grammatical construction because the British Crown still claims all of that land belongs to them, but they are now saying we will reserve this land for native peoples, and the British Crown has reintroduced itself as the balance of power between the settler colonists in the east and native peoples in the west. To bring us to what is supposed to be todays topic, reunderstanding the American Revolution, i think it is useful to think in terms of a reestablishment of the balance of power very briefly in which the British Empire sees itself as the balance between the native peoples whose lands it says it has guaranteed and reserved in the interior, and the colonists it is trying to restrain in areas east of the mountains. With that in mind, lets talk about native americans and european settlers war for independence. If we think about this threeway contest, it might be useful to think about the wars for independence as multiple wars, multiple American Revolutions, all of them working out within this structure of British Empire, native peoples, settler colonists. In many respects, what we have is two wars for independence, one by the settler colonists against the empire, and another, much more complicated set of wars for independence by native people trying to maintain their independence in this context of the British Empire and its settler colonists. It is not entirely clear there their war for independence is so much against the British Empire as it is against the settler colonists. We have two american wars for independence, one by the european settlers, one by the native americans. Among the things at stake in the contest is an interesting contest over who gets to call themselves americans. I do not know whether we have thought about that much before. For most of the 17th and 18th century, when europeans whether british or french or colonists use the word americans they use that term to describe Indigenous Peoples from north america. It is in this period that settler colonists get themselves the right to call themselves the real americans, which is a perfect example of what we were talking about as the settler colonial mindset. We are the real americans, not those people who now need to be called some other thing, or at best native americans because they need an adjective, which they did not need before. Really, we are the real native americans, the settler colonists who call themselves americans. As teachers, it is important to think about the words we use and why we use them. Maybe we better be careful about talking about the American Revolution, or at least think in terms of American Revolutions, american wars for independence, and keep in mind that native peoples and settler colonists are both engaged in their american wars for independence in this period, and maybe even struggle to find another way, another word to use to describe those settler colonists other than the americans, the term they want to use for themselves. A lot of options here, perhaps. We could call them european settlers, but they are not really settlers anymore. Most have been here for generations. As we have seen, they see themselves as the genuine occupiers of this landscape. We find ourselves using words like u. S. Americans, and anybody who has dealt with people who live in other parts of the americas for this idea of how come you get to be called americans and we are not, comes up with mouthfuls like u. S. Americans. We also might talk about peoples of the u. S. , both of those are mouthfuls. I want to throw out a term that may or may not stick. It probably wont stick. I did not come up with this term myself. I believe it was gregory nobles, who teaches at georgia tech, maybe 15 or 20 years ago. The word i want to throw out is usonian, a person who lives in the United States. Ok, fellow usonians. What do we think about that . It is a real word. Does anyone know where the word comes from . Frank lloyd wright came up with plans for what he called the usonian house, the peoples house for the United States. Simple architecture. The kind of house a good usonian would live in. Lets think about the possibility we might want to use the word usonian to describe the people creating the United States. [indiscernible] other opportunities are people of european ancestry. Natives who live in the same area . Daniel i would say it would include anyone subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, enslaved africans, free africans, all kinds of other people, but the People Associated with the political entity of the United States we could call usonians rather than americans. They are all americans. How do you feel about putting these people under an umbrella, indigenous people, African People i have trouble identifying what is the purpose. We have been stressing there is always an s on the end of these words. It is always contingent. There are many meetings. It helps to understand the thing we are trying to call the usonian revolution, some African People cast in their lot with the United States, but far more cast in their lot, for their own purposes, with the british. Native peoples, some of them cast in their lot with United States. The vast majority were engaged in their own struggle for independence. My stressing usonian is fundamentally the people used to call european settler colonists creating their own political order dominated by white men and dominated by a view of the United States is legitimate owner of this continent. In many respects we have the usonians against the British Empire against the native peoples, but there are complicated configurations, shifting alliances, people operating for different purposes and different ways. [indiscernible] i feel like people are moving, i think it erases peoples individual reasons for doing different things. African people fighting with the british or wit