The American National State and the Early West by William H. Bergmann (review)

Abstract

American National State and Early West. By William H. Bergmann. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. 288. Cloth, $90.00.)William H. Bergmann seeks to correct an allegedly pervasive misunderstanding, both popular and scholarly, of American westward expansion: Most people, scholars included, rarely view federal government as an important player in development of trans-Appalachian West. Rather they envision a country largely devoid of a powerful national with spontaneous, opportunistic, egalitarian, and racist forces shaping early nation (1-2). Bergmann promises to bring the national state back into story, by emphasizing federal role in stimulating commercial capitalism and national integration (2). book's title and introduction promise attention to entire transAppalachian West, but Bergmann focuses almost exclusively on Old Northwest Territory, north and west of Ohio, to exclusion of old Southwest. In sum, he dwells on region where federal government waxed strongest to neglect of where it waned.Bergmann tells a familiar story of a federal government struggling to gain control of brutal warfare between natives and settlers in Ohio watershed. After suffering crushing defeats in 1790 and 1791, United States troops defeated a confederacy of native peoples in 1794 and compelled their chiefs to make sweeping territorial concessions in Treaty of Greenville in 1795. After 1800, William Henry Harrison accelerated American expansion through a series of controversial land cession treaties bitterly opposed by Shawnee brothers, Tenkswatawa and Tecumseh, who ultimately suffered defeat. Grateful settlers credited and embraced triumphant federal which also provided economic stimulus through military supply contracts, post offices, and postal roads.Evidence, however, often lags behind Bergmann's most sweeping assertions. The rise of a western market economy must be credited in large part to intervention of federal government, he insists (171). But he does not provide statistical data to demonstrate aggregate impact of federal investment on region's economic growth. He describes federal bureaucracy as concentrated, penetrative, centralized, and specialized, but neglects to specify numbers of federal officials or their annual budgets (7). He does mention, in passing, that postmaster general's office employed just five others in Washington, DC, in 1798, which renders federal government something less than concentrated. Such a government would also seem pretty paltry if compared to its southern neighbor, Spanish Empire, in terms of size and expenditures. Bergmann does often digress to discuss British colony of Upper Canada, but offers only anecdotal evidence drawn from official correspondence rather than a comparative analysis of bureaucratic structures and their budgets. author also should have compared federal government's scale of operations to those of frontier state governments-for example Kentucky, Ohio, and New York-to measure which form of governance made greater and more effective investment in economic development. I would bet on states (prior to 1860). …