No Useless Mouth (eBook)

Waging War and Fighting Hunger in the American Revolution

Rachel B. Herrmann (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2019
308 Seiten
Cornell University Press (Verlag)
978-1-5017-1612-6 (ISBN)

Infos

In the era of the American Revolution, the rituals of diplomacy between the British, Patriots, and Native Americans featured gifts of food, ceremonial feasts, and a shared experience of hunger. When diplomacy failed, Native Americans could destroy food stores and cut off supply chains in order to assert authority. Black colonists also stole and destroyed food to ward off hunger and carve out tenuous spaces of freedom. Hunger was a means of power and a weapon of war.

In No Useless Mouth, Rachel B. Herrmann argues that Native Americans and formerly enslaved black colonists ultimately lost the battle against hunger and the larger struggle for power because white British and United States officials curtailed the abilities of men and women to fight hunger on their own terms. By describing three interrelated behaviors—food diplomacy, victual imperialism, and victual warfare—the book shows that, during this tumultuous period, hunger prevention efforts offered strategies to claim power, maintain communities, and keep rival societies at bay.

Herrmann shows how Native Americans, free blacks, and enslaved peoples were "useful mouths"—not mere supplicants for food, without rights or power—who used hunger for cooperation and violence, and took steps to circumvent starvation. Her wide-ranging research on black Loyalists, Iroquois, Cherokee, Creek, and Western Confederacy Indians demonstrates that hunger creation and prevention were tools of diplomacy and warfare available to all people involved in the American Revolution. Placing hunger at the center of these struggles foregrounds the contingency and plurality of power in the British Atlantic during the Revolutionary Era.

Thanks to generous funding from Cardiff University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellopen.org) and other repositories.

Autor

lt;P>Rachel B. Herrmann is Lecturer in Modern American History at Cardiff University. She is the editor of To Feast on Us as Their Prey.

Inhalt

Introduction: Why the Fight against Hunger Mattered
Part One: Power Rising
1. Hunger, Accommodation, and Violence in Colonial America
2. Iroquois Food Diplomacy in the Revolutionary North
3. Cherokee and Creek Victual Warfare in the Revolutionary South
Part Two: Power in Flux
4. Black Victual Warriors and Hunger Creation
5. Fighting Hunger, Fearing Violence after the Revolutionary War
6. Learning from Food Laws in Nova Scotia
Part Three: Power Waning
7. Victual Imperialism and U.S. Indian Policy
8. Black Loyalist Hunger Prevention in Sierra Leone
Conclusion: Why Native and Black Revolutionaries Lost the Fight
Acknowledgments
Bibliographic Note
Notes
Index

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.11.2019
• Zusatzinfo: 5 b&w halftones
• Verlagsort: Ithaca
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 150 x 150 mm
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Schlagworte: African American food history • agricultural history • American Colonies • American History • american military history • American Revolution • American Revolution course • American revolution history • American Revolution historybuffs • American Revolution scholars • American Revolution studies • American Revolution teachings • American Revolution textbooks • black colonists • cherokee alliances • colonial america food diplomacy • colonial american food sovereignty • cross-cultural relations with native americans • enslaved people food sovereignty • environmental problems colonies • examples of victual warfare • fighting hunger after the revolutionary war • food american history • food diplomacy • food laws in nova scotia • food policies colonies • food science • food security american revolution • food security colonists • food security history • founding american history • historiographical • history of cherokees • history of creek indians • history of enslaved people • history of food security • history of iroquois indians • hunger, food, diplomacy, enslaved people, victual warfare, victual imperialism • hunger in colonial america • Indigenous and Black history. • indigenous studies • introduction to food history • iroquois food diplomacy • native american food diplomacy • Native American food history • native american food sovereignty • Native American History • native american relations with colonists • Political Gastronomy • power relations between white and nonwhite populations • Revolutionary War • scholars of the American Revolution • Settler Colonialism • studies of hunger are always studies of power • timothy pickering • victual imperialism • victual warfare
• ISBN-10: 1-5017-1612-3 / 1501716123
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5017-1612-6 / 9781501716126