Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The second part of the title, The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, is a more accurate description of what this good book describes. Gallay presents a detailed description and analysis of the interaction between European colonists, particularly the English in what we now call South Carolina, and the native peoples of the Southeast at the end of the 17th and the early 18th centuries. Gallay is primarily concerned with 2 issues. First, how did the native peoples respond to European colonization? Second, what led to the British gaining the upper hand over the French and Spanish? According to Gallay, the key feature that addresses both these questions is the Indian slave trade. While the French and Spanish pursued colonization for essentially strategic reasons with very limited resources, the British Carolina colony originated as a commercial enterprise originally supporting Caribbean sugar plantations. The British colonists became enmeshed in relatively large scale commerce involving virtually the whole Southeast while the French pursued diplomacy with commercial elements in a more limited area and the Spanish attempted to use a mission system in the Florida region. Gallay presents the Indian slave trade as the key feature of the English trade system. The British colonists used European goods to barter for slaves and other products, particularly hides, from native groups. The slave trade connects the Carolina colony to the larger Atlantic plantation economy and drives development of the colony. This led to an increase in warfare between Indian communities as warfare became commerce driven. The British colonists were then able to exploit their commercial leverage and the increase in turmoil to establish a preeminent position in the South. Gallay is careful to point out that the South was anarchic and conflict ridden prior to European intervention and that slavery was a traditional institution, though expanded greatly with commercial slaving. While Gallay does not say so, this is essentialy an extension of the model of slaving developed to describe the African end of the great Atlantic slave trade. In both the case of Africa and Gallay's discussion of the American South, the model points up the key roles of, and the power of the indigenous communities, which were actually more powerful than the European communities.
This is a creditable interpretation but the data that Gallay actually presents about Indian slaving is relatively modest. There is some anecdotal information and he does make an estimate of the number of slaves taken, arguing that more slaves were shipped out of Charles Town (modern Charleston) than came in. Gallay is clearly limited by his documentary material, most of which does not address directly the issue of the Indian slave trade. Most of the book, however, is not directly about the Indian slave trade but a detailed account of 2 related topics. The first, and best documented, is about the struggles between colonists, the colonial government, and the governing investors in England to regulate the colony, particularly trade with the Indians. The second is an effort to reconstruct the diplomacy and warfare between the different European groups and Indian communities in this period. This is arguably the best part of the book; an effort to describe realistically the independent roles of native communities. Again, though Gallay does not mention this but pioneering work by Francis Jennings and others have demonstrated the powerful and independent role played by North American native communities, particularly the Iroquois, in this period.
Overall, this is a valuable and clearly written book.
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This title focuses on the traffic in Indian slaves in the American South. For decades the Indian slave trade linked southern lives and created a whirlwind of violence and profit-making. Alan Gallay documents in vivid detail the operation of the slave trade, the processes by which Europeans and Native Americans became participants in it, and the profound consequences it had for the South and its peoples.
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