Rob Harper
Unsettling the West: Violence and State Building in the Ohio Valley.
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Early American Studies. First printing. 9780812249644 xvi/250 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.5" x 9.5", is bound in black cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine. Book and dust jacket are new. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"The revolutionary Ohio Valley is often depicted as a chaotic Hobbesian dystopia, in which Indians and colonists slaughtered each other at every turn. In "Unsettling the West," Rob Harper overturns this familiar story. Rather than flailing in a morass, the peoples of the revolutionary Ohio Valley actively and persistently sought to establish a new political order that would affirm their land claims, protect them against attack, and promote trade. According to Harper, their efforts repeatedly failed less because of racial antipathy or inexorable competition for land than because of specific state policies that demanded Indian dispossession, encouraged rapid colonization, and mobilized men for war."