The name of war

King Philip's War and the origins of American identity

1st ed.
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Last edited by MARC Bot
July 13, 2024 | History

The name of war

King Philip's War and the origins of American identity

1st ed.
  • 3.0 (1 rating) ·
  • 19 Want to read
  • 2 Have read

King Philip's War, the excruciating racial war - colonists against Indians - that erupted in New England in 1675, was, in proportion to population, the bloodiest in American history. Some even argued that the massacres and outrages on both sides were too horrific to "deserve the name of a war.".

It all began when Philip (called Metacom by his own people), the leader of the Wampanoag Indians, led attacks against English towns in the colony of Plymouth. The war spread quickly, pitting a loose confederation of southeastern Algonquians against a coalition of English colonists. While it raged, colonial armies pursued enemy Indians through the swamps and woods of New England, and Indians attacked English farms and towns from Narragansett Bay to the Connecticut River Valley.

Both sides, in fact, had pursued the war seemingly without restraint, killing women and children, torturing captives, and mutilating the dead. The fighting ended after Philip was shot, quartered, and beheaded in August 1676.

The war's brutality compelled the colonists to defend themselves against accusations that they had become savages. But Jill Lepore makes clear that it was after the war - and because of it - that the boundaries between cultures, hitherto blurred, turned into rigid ones. King Philip's War became one of the most written-about wars in our history, and Lepore argues that the words strengthened and hardened feelings that, in turn, strengthened and hardened the enmity between Indians and Anglos.

She shows how, as late as the nineteenth century, memories of the war were instrumental in justifying Indian removals - and how in our own century that same war has inspired Indian attempts to preserve "Indianness" as fiercely as the early settlers once struggled to preserve their Englishness.

Publish Date
Publisher
Knopf
Language
English
Pages
337

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: The Name of War
The Name of War
2009, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
E-book in English
Cover of: The Name of War
The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity
April 27, 1999, Vintage, Vintage Books
in English
Cover of: The name of war
The name of war: King Philip's War and the origins of American identity
1998, Knopf
in English - 1st ed.

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-326) and index.

Published in
New York

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
973.2/4
Library of Congress
E83.867 .L46 1998, E83.67 .L46 1998, E87.876 .L46 1998

The Physical Object

Pagination
xxviii, 337 p. :
Number of pages
337

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL657660M
Internet Archive
nameofwarkingphi0000lepo_n9h5
ISBN 10
0679446869
LCCN
97002820
OCLC/WorldCat
36573588
Library Thing
140634

Work Description

Winner of the the 1998 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award of the Phi Beta Kappa Society King Philip's War, the excruciating racial war--colonists against Indians--that erupted in New England in 1675, was, in proportion to population, the bloodiest in American history. Some even argued that the massacres and outrages on both sides were too horrific to "deserve the name of a war."It all began when Philip (called Metacom by his own people), the leader of the Wampanoag Indians, led attacks against English towns in the colony of Plymouth. The war spread quickly, pitting a loose confederation of southeastern Algonquians against a coalition of English colonists. While it raged, colonial armies pursued enemy Indians through the swamps and woods of New England, and Indians attacked English farms and towns from Narragansett Bay to the Connecticut River Valley. Both sides, in fact, had pursued the war seemingly without restraint, killing women and children, torturing captives, and mutilating the dead. The fighting ended after Philip was shot, quartered, and beheaded in August 1676.The war's brutality compelled the colonists to defend themselves against accusations that they had become savages. But Jill Lepore makes clear that it was after the war--and because of it--that the boundaries between cultures, hitherto blurred, turned into rigid ones. King Philip's War became one of the most written-about wars in our history, and Lepore argues that the words strengthened and hardened feelings that, in turn, strengthened and hardened the enmity between Indians and Anglos. She shows how, as late as the nineteenth century, memories of the war were instrumental in justifying Indian removals--and how in our own century that same war has inspired Indian attempts to preserve "Indianness" as fiercely as the early settlers once struggled to preserve their Englishness.Telling the story of what may have been the bitterest of American conflicts, and its reverberations over the centuries, Lepore has enabled us to see how the ways in which we remember past events are as important in their effect on our history as were the events themselves.From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpts

In the late, chilly days of January 1675, John Sassamon set out for Plymouth.
added anonymously.

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