What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848

by Daniel Walker Howe

Indian Removal reveals much more about Jacksonian politics than just its racism. In the first place it illustrates imperialism, that is, a determination to expand geographically and economically, imposing an alien will upon subject peoples and commandeering their resources. Imperialism need not be confined to cases of overseas expansion, such as the western European powers carried on in the nineteenth century; it can just as appropriately apply to expansion into geographically contiguous areas, as in the case of the United States and tsarist Russia. Imperialism is a more accurate and fruitful category for understanding the relations between the United States and the Native Americans than the metaphor of paternalism so often invoked by both historians and contemporaries (as in treaty references to the “Great White Father” and his “Indian children”).