Reviewed by:

• Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States
  from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas by Jeffrey Ostler
• Paul Conrad (bio)

That the Indigenous peoples of the Americas suffered genocide in the centuries after 1492 is widely accepted as fact within contemporary Native communities. Among non-Native scholars, however, the "question of genocide," as it has often been termed, has been much more controversial. This is particularly true within the discipline of history, owing to historians' concerns about overgeneralization and their disagreements about defining "genocide" in the first place. Undoubtedly, the debate has also been inflected by some scholars' discomfort with portraying US history too critically.

Readers of this journal may not be especially interested in a debate that many historians have themselves grown tired of, but it is necessary context for understanding Jeffrey Ostler's new book. Surviving Genocide is among the most ambitious works yet to tackle the question of genocide in US history. Ostler examines US-Native relations from before the American Revolution through the eve of the Civil War, focusing on the vast region of North America east of the Mississippi. A planned second volume will focus on the North American West. Across eleven chronologically and geographically organized chapters, Ostler advances a twofold argument captured by the book's title. First, through sustained analysis of US policy and actions toward Indigenous nations, Ostler argues that "genocide was a part of the history under consideration" (7). Second, and relatedly, he argues that Indigenous people demonstrated a "consciousness of genocide," [End Page 286] even in contexts where genocide did not occur, and acted creatively to survive the perceived threat of destruction (147).

Ostler's expansive analysis of US-Indigenous relations casts familiar histories in a new light. After a discussion of the demographic consequences of European colonization before the mid-eighteenth century in eastern North America, part 1 examines warfare involving settlers, Natives, and imperial armies from the Seven Years' War of the 1750s and 1760s through the War of 1812. Ostler argues that imperial officials preferred to avoid the mass killing of Native people and negotiate their dependence or dispossession through trade and treaties. However, they believed genocidal campaigns were "just and lawful" when Native people proved noncompliant (94). Despite much loss, Native nations nonetheless persisted through this period through a variety of means, especially evacuation from zones of danger, intertribal confederations, and artful diplomacy. While specialists will find much familiar here, both Ostler's analysis of the perceived legality of genocidal warfare and his close attention to the demographics of Indigenous survival break new ground. For example, Ostler finds that Native populations actually increased in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, illustrating the ingenuity of Native nations' varied survival strategies in the face of the existential threats of settlers-citizens and their governments. Ostler's findings regarding Native demography also illustrate the inaccuracy of non-Natives' ubiquitous statements that Indians would soon vanish.

Parts 2 and 3 of the book examine the forced migration or "removal" of Native nations from eastern North America in the early to mid-nineteenth century. These sections recast "Indian removal" as a decades-long process of which Andrew Jackson was merely one especially vocal proponent. Ostler argues that scholars have taken the statements of US officials like George Washington, Henry Knox, and Thomas Jefferson too literally when they spoke of "civilizing" and Christianizing Native people. He shows that this humanitarianism was largely performative and oriented toward internal and external audiences (including Native and European nations). Ostler argues convincingly that removal was in fact at the core of US Indian policy from the start, as "U.S. officials not only talked about removal well before 1830 [but also] took concrete steps to make it happen" (191). Compared to other recent scholarship, such as Dawn Peterson's Indians in the Family (Harvard UP, 2017), Ostler focuses less attention on the expansion [End Page 287] of Black chattel slavery and the pressures it placed on Indian nations, especially in the South, than might be expected. This is in...

审核人：

• 幸存的种族灭绝：美洲原住民和美国，
  从美国独立战争到堪萨斯流血，杰弗里·奥斯特勒（Jeffrey Ostler）
• 保罗·康拉德（生物）

在1492年之后的几个世纪中，美洲土著人民遭受了种族灭绝，这在当代土著社区中已被广泛接受。然而，在非本土学者中，通常被称为“种族灭绝的问题”的争议更大。在历史学科中，这尤其如此，这是由于历史学家对过度概括化的担忧，以及他们对首先定义“种族灭绝”的分歧。无疑，一些学者对批评性地描绘美国历史感到不舒服，也使这场辩论受到了影响。

该杂志的读者可能对许多历史学家已经厌倦的辩论并不特别感兴趣，但是理解杰弗里·奥斯特勒的新书是必要的背景。幸存的种族灭绝是解决美国历史上种族灭绝问题的最雄心勃勃的作品之一。奥斯特勒（Ostler）考察了从美国独立战争到内战前夕的美国与美国之间的关系，重点是密西西比州以东的北美广大地区。计划中的第二卷将侧重于北美西部。在按时间顺序和地理顺序排列的11个章节中，奥斯特勒提出了本书标题所包含的双重论点。首先，通过对美国对土著民族政策和行动的持续分析，奥斯特勒认为“种族灭绝是所考虑的历史的一部分”（7）。其次，与此相关的是，他认为土著人民表现出了“种族灭绝意识”，[结束页286]即使在没有发生种族灭绝的情况下，也可以创造性地采取行动，以抵抗被认为的破坏威胁（147）。

奥斯特勒（Ostler）对美国与原住民关系的广泛分析以崭新的视角展现了熟悉的历史。在讨论了18世纪中叶之前在北美东部欧洲殖民地的人口统计学后果之后，第1部分研究了1750年代和1760年代七年战争到1812年战争期间涉及定居者，原住民和帝国军的战争。奥斯特勒认为，帝国官员更愿意避免大规模杀害土著人民，并通过贸易和条约来谈判对他们的依赖或剥夺。但是，他们认为，在土著人民被证明不合规的情况下，种族灭绝运动是“公正合法的”（94）。尽管损失惨重，但土著民族仍然通过各种方式在此期间坚持不懈，特别是撤离危险区，部落间邦联，和巧妙的外交。虽然专家会在这里很熟悉，但奥斯特勒（Osler）对种族灭绝战争的合法性的分析以及他对土著生存人口统计的密切关注都开辟了新天地。例如，奥斯特勒（Ostler）发现，在18世纪末和19世纪初，土著人口实际上有所增加，这说明了面对定居者及其政府面临的生存威胁，土著民族各种生存策略的独创性。奥斯特勒（Ostler）关于本地人口统计的调查结果也表明，非本地人普遍存在的说法很快就会消失，这是不正确的。对种族灭绝战争的合法性的分析以及他对土著生存人口统计的密切关注开辟了新的天地。例如，奥斯特勒（Ostler）发现，在18世纪末和19世纪初，土著人口实际上有所增加，这说明了面对定居者及其政府面临的生存威胁，土著民族各种生存策略的独创性。奥斯特勒（Ostler）关于本地人口统计的调查结果也表明，非本地人普遍存在的说法很快就会消失，这是不正确的。对种族灭绝战争的合法性的分析以及他对土著生存人口统计的密切关注开辟了新的天地。例如，奥斯特勒（Ostler）发现，在18世纪末和19世纪初，土著人口实际上有所增加，这说明了面对定居者及其政府面临的生存威胁，土著民族各种生存策略的独创性。奥斯特勒（Ostler）关于本地人口统计的调查结果也表明，非本地人普遍存在的说法很快就会消失，这是不正确的。面对定居者公民及其政府的生存威胁，我们采取了多种多样的生存策略。奥斯特勒（Ostler）关于本地人口统计的调查结果也表明，非本地人普遍存在的说法很快就会消失，这是不正确的。面对定居者公民及其政府的生存威胁，我们采取了多种多样的生存策略。奥斯特勒（Ostler）关于本地人口统计的调查结果也表明，非本地人普遍存在的说法很快就会消失，这是不正确的。

该书的第2部分和第3部分研究了19世纪初至19世纪中叶从北美洲东部被迫迁移或“迁移”的土著民族。这些部分将“印度人撤离”改写为长达数十年的过程，而安德鲁·杰克逊只是其中一位特别支持者。奥斯特勒认为，学者们在谈到“文明化”和基督教化土著人民时，也从字面上接受了美国官员如乔治·华盛顿，亨利·诺克斯和托马斯·杰斐逊的说法。他表明，这种人道主义在很大程度上是表演性的，面向内部和外部受众（包括土著和欧洲国家）。奥斯特勒令人信服地指出，撤职实际上从一开始就是美国印第安人政策的核心，因为“印第安人家庭（哈佛UP，2017年），奥斯特勒重点关注较少的扩展[尾页287]黑人奴隶制度，并将其放置在印第安民族的压力，尤其是在南方，比人们预期。这是在...