Wayne E. Lee, editor. Empire and Indigenes: Intercultural Alliance, Imperial Expansion, and Warfare in the Early Modern World.

Abstract

This volume is devoted to the comparative study of how colonial powers and indigenous subjects and non-subjects managed their relations in the early modern world. The regions examined included Russia's southern frontier, the Ottoman frontier in the Balkans and the Arab lands, colonial India under the British East India Company, North America, Angola, Dutch Guiana, and Brazil under Portuguese-Dutch contestation. The themes explored include the role of trade, diplomacy, and religion in structuring relations between colonial rulers and indigenous peoples. The authors take a special interest in the phenomenon of “ethnic soldiering”—the recruitment into colonial military forces or allied military formations of indigenous peoples valued for fighting skills adapted to the special conditions of warfare on colonial frontiers. By focusing on these themes they are able to offer a more nuanced and critical understanding of such concepts as military revolution and conquest. Editor Wayne E. Lee's introductory essay suggests taking as a model for comparison and contrast the Spanish conquests in Mexico, Peru, and other parts of the New World, since they demonstrated early on to other European powers how it was possible for a European military force small in numbers and with declining advantage in tactical surprise to achieve effective “conquering” power by exploiting the divisions between indigenous peoples. He sees this Spanish model of reliance on allies and ethnic soldiers as being repeated in several other regions of the western hemisphere. However, he acknowledges that this model could not be taken as fully paradigmatic given that other Native American states facing conquest were less centralized and brittle and had more opportunity to observe and adapt to Spanish techniques of conquering power.