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The Settlers' Empire: Colonialism and State Formation in America's Old Northwest. By Saler Bethel . Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press , 2015. Pp. 382. $45.00, cloth.
Reviews of Books
United States and Canada
This case study looks at Wisconsin's path from territory to state by viewing the United States as both a "postcolonial republic" and a "settler empire." (pp. 1-2) In other words, Bethel Saler examines the intersections between the United States desire for white self-government and its determination to govern others such as American Indians and French creoles in the west.
Wisconsin was the last of the five states created out of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance. Although Indian title to large parts of the territory had not been secured and foreign threats loomed, the Northwest Ordinance provided a framework for territorial government and a course by which territories would eventually enter the Union as states, equal in power and status to their predecessors. As Saler notes, this was a far more complicated process than might appear. State formation was not just political but also cultural. The people of the territory, both white and non-white, had to be culturally fitted for incorporation into the polity.
In the late eighteenth century, the federal government not only designed...