No Useless Mouth: Waging War and Fighting Hunger in the American Revolution by Rachel B. Herrmann

Abstract

Reviewed by: No Useless Mouth: Waging War and Fighting Hunger in the American Revolution by Rachel B. Herrmann Natale A. Zappia (bio) No Useless Mouth: Waging War and Fighting Hunger in the American Revolution rachel b. herrmann Cornell University Press, 2019 298 pp. Sweeping in scope yet tightly focused on a meticulously driven methodology, Rachel B. Herrmann's No Useless Mouth: Waging War and Fighting Hunger in the American Revolution points the way toward new historiographical directions. Her analysis of the American Revolution from the perspective of Indigenous and African Americans has become increasingly familiar in recent years, highlighting overlooked contestations of power asserted by marginalized communities during the momentous years before and after the American Revolution. However, Herrmann takes a new and innovative turn, diving into the archives to parse out the ways that this power intersected with attempts to declare, maintain, and control food sovereignty. What results is a fascinating journey into a history [End Page 976] that many if not most readers of these pages today have left behind generations ago—the battle over hunger. This history, Herrmann contends, dramatically shaped warfare, diplomacy, and freedom struggled over by formerly enslaved communities and Native Americans. These groups faced uncertain (and usually disastrous) consequences resulting from the American Revolution. During this dynamic period of time when freedom was up for grabs, these communities defined their liberty, in part, through their ability to fight hunger. In contrast, British and American military commanders, diplomats, and government officials waged "victual warfare" and/or "victual imperialism" (Herrmann's useful terms) to limit or undermine Indigenous sovereignty and African American freedom. This tension between political rights and physical sustenance has been mostly ignored or forgotten by scholars as food insecurity (which still remains a scourge across the United States and around the world) became a solvable—rather than intractable and timeless—problem. Those who seek to analyze the history of starvation, Herrmann points out, must carefully assess the narrative descriptions and contemporary understanding of what starvation actually meant. Doing so, then, means further centering food and hunger as categories of historical analyses—and No Useless Mouth seeks to do exactly that. Simultaneously, Herrmann also conjoins diplomatic history with these concerns in ways that have eluded previous scholarship on the American Revolution. Indeed, No Useless Mouth, Herrmann points out, "challenges how we think about the American Revolution" (3), incorporating the diplomatic efforts of Indigenous nations and freed people of African descent. Further, Herrmann takes us to multiple locales across the revolutionary Atlantic, from the Cherokee and Creek worlds of the American Southeast to the Indigenous Old Northwest to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) heartland of the Northeast to Loyalist Nova Scotia and even to Sierra Leone. Herrmann's ambitious yet measured approach offers a refreshing roadmap for new (and senior) scholars interested in expanding the parameters and dimensions of the Atlantic World. Herrmann's most important interventions revolve around historicizing hunger and emphasizing the importance of Indigenous and African American power during a historical period when the relationship between colonized and colonizers was in flux during the age of revolutions. The title of the book originates from the 1780 writings of Quebec governor General [End Page 977] Frederick Haldimand. As Herrmann skillfully deconstructs this and many other diplomatic passages, Haldimand's phrase alludes to Indigenous power to wage war and "[foster] the spread of hunger among the enemy soldiers and civilians alike" (4). No Useless Mouth, in fact, "turns these narratives on their heads … finding] more rather than less power in Indian communities" (4). Herrmann envisions a similar dynamic among communities of African descent who fled as Loyalist communities to other parts of the British Empire. Herrmann reveals that "[if] formerly enslaved black colonists were legally empowered to fight hunger themselves, then both groups possessed more authority than scholars have supposed" (5). As she reveals, this effect clearly resonated in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone. No Useless Mouth is divided into three parts: "Power Rising," "Power in Flux," and "Power Waning." Part I focuses on Indigenous food diplomacy. In this section, Herrmann weaves her argument through familiar historiographical terrain, scouring diplomatic records between the fledgling United States and once-dominant and still formidable Indigenous confederacies. Despite the...