The Territorialities of U.S. Imperialism(s): Conflicting Discourses of Sovereignty, Jurisdiction and Territory in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Legal Texts and Indigenous Life Writing by Jens Temmen

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Territorialities of U.S. Imperialism(s): Conflicting Discourses of Sovereignty, Jurisdiction and Territory in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Legal Texts and Indigenous Life Writing by Jens Temmen Katrina Phillips (bio) The Territorialities of U.S. Imperialism(s): Conflicting Discourses of Sovereignty, Jurisdiction and Territory in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Legal Texts and Indigenous Life Writing Jens Temmen Universitätsverlag Winter, 2020, x +259 pp. ISBN 9783825347130, $56 hardcover. Settlers in what is now known as the United States dreamed of expansion before they even reached the westernmost part of the continent. According to Roberta Conner, Joseph J. Ellis identified a "fully continental vision of an American empire" in George Washington's 1783 annual message—and James P. Ronda contends that Thomas Jefferson was "determined to make the United States an imperial contender" (qtd. in Conner 108). It would not be as easy as these men hoped, though, particularly as American settlers, surveyors, and soldiers continually encountered hundreds of sovereign Native nations who had called these lands homes since time immemorial. America's burgeoning legal system—and its stumbling implementation of often contradictory federal Indian policies—regularly required what Jens Temmen considers "the terminology of aberration, exception, or simply extinction" in order to marginalize Native nations within US legal discourses (39). The federal government, along with American citizens, businessmen, and military officials, turned their attentions overseas toward the end of the nineteenth century, gleefully embracing the spoils of imperialism. For Temmen, though, this shift is not as neatly defined or differentiated as some scholars may hope (39). In The Territorialities of U.S. Imperialism(s), Temmen traces the trajectory of US imperial expansion from the continent to overseas, focusing on what he considers "the moments and spaces that connect or disconnect these phases" (2). For Temmen, the US nation-state became conterminous with the North American continent as early as the American Revolution, projecting sovereignty over the continent while simultaneously nullifying Native and Indigenous sovereignties (3). Temmen argues that the study of US imperialism seems to be in a holding pattern, one that maintains an ongoing dialogue over how to analyze the differences in the two phases of American expansion without simply reverting to what Amy Kaplan calls "the central geographic bifurcation between continental expansion [End Page 104] and overseas empire" (10). The book is rooted in what he describes as "nodes of connection and narratives of disconnection between these U.S. imperialism(s)," centering 1898 as an alleged watershed moment for US imperialism (8). Temmen's addition of the plural "s" in parentheses is deliberate, underscoring his focus on this "multitude of imperial strategies, while still emphasizing their fundamental connectedness" (11–12). The notion of "the trinity of sovereignty, jurisdiction, and territory" serves as what Temmen calls "the core vocabulary" of the book (3). By analyzing works that were either written or cowritten by Indigenous authors alongside US legal texts, Temmen highlights the myriad ways Indigenous people have long pushed back against the notions of US imperialism. At first glance, Temmen's choice of works may seem incongruous or too dissimilar or disparate to support his argument: Temmen places John Rollin Ridge's The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit (1854) and Queen Lili'uokalani's Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen (1898) alongside Geronimo and Stephen M. Barrett's Geronimo's Story of His Life (1905). One might argue that there are few similarities among the histories of these three Indigenous nations—the Cherokee, the Kānaka Maoli, and the Apache—not to mention the differences among their engagements with and methods of resistance to American imperialism. However, Temmen's careful reading of these literary texts against legal and government-written texts balances out what he calls the consideration of the two, particularly by legal scholars, as "unequal partners" divided between robust enforcement and emotional education (45). The Indigenous authors of these texts wanted justice for their communities, and they deliberately put the US legal system on trial through their writings (48). These texts, for Temmen, become a means of "haunting" the system that has long sought to erase and eradicate Indigenous sovereignty. Temmen begins with Ridge's dime novel...