The Settlers’ Empire: Colonialism and State Formation in America’s Old Northwest

Abstract

The Settlers’ Empire examines state formation in the Northwest Territory, primarily focusing on Wisconsin. Most of Saler’s attention centers on the 1820s and 1830s, after the War of 1812 had secured the area’s fate as a permanent part of the United States, but before a large influx of white immigrants during the early 1840s led to statehood. During these decades, Wisconsin was a colonial region in an America that was both “a postcolonial republic and a contiguous domestic empire” (1). Saler argues that the government’s cultural and political aims in Wisconsin were deeply intertwined. She is most interested in federal efforts to impose a vision of civilization on the various peoples who lived on the western shore of Lake Michigan. The early occupants of Wisconsin were notably diverse: among them numbered various nations of Native Americans, Anglo and Francophone white traders, along with interloping lead miners, including African Americans. Forging a new state out of this territory led to governmental interference in the inhabitants’ everyday lives: “reform of local economies, religious conversion by missionaries, and the regulation of marriage and family were all foundational aspects of state formation in and of themselves” (8).