Lee Wayne E. (ed.) Empires and Indigenes: Intercultural Alliance, Imperial Expansion, and Warfare in the Early Modern World

New York University Press, 2011. — 305 p.The early modern period (c. 1500–1800) of world history is characterized by the establishment and aggressive expansion of European empires, and warfare between imperial powers and indigenous peoples was a central component of the quest for global dominance. From the Portuguese in Africa to the Russians and Ottomans in Central Asia, empire builders could not avoid military interactions with native populations, and many discovered that imperial expansion was impossible without the cooperation, and, in some cases, alliances with the natives they encountered in the new worlds they sought to rule.Empires and Indigenes is a sweeping examination of how intercultural interactions between Europeans and indigenous people influenced military choices and strategic action. Ranging from the Muscovites on the western steppe to the French and English in North America, it analyzes how diplomatic and military systems were designed to accommodate the demands and expectations of local peoples, who aided the imperial powers even as they often became subordinated to them. Contributors take on the analytical problem from a variety of levels, from the detailed case studies of the different ways indigenous peoples could be employed, to more comprehensive syntheses and theoretical examinations of diplomatic processes, ethnic soldier mobilization, and the interaction of culture and military technology.Projecting Power in the Early Modern World: The Spanish Model?Military, Cultural, and Diplomatic Exchange in the Imperial-Indigenous Encounter
Gaining the Diplomatic Edge: Kinship, Trade, Ritual, and Religion in Amerindian Alliances in Early North America
The Military Revolution of Native North America:Firearms, Forts, and Polities
Revolution, Evolution, or Devolution: The Military and the Making of Colonial IndiaWarrior Peoples and Uniform Recruits in Old World Empires
Muscovite-Nomad Relations on the Steppe Frontier before 1800 and the Development of Russia’s “Inclusive” Imperialism
Ottoman Ethnographies of Warfare, 1500–1800 p.Variations: Types of Indigenous-Imperial Alliances in the Atlantic Empires
Firearms, Diplomacy, and Conquest in Angola: Cooperation and Alliance in West Central Africa, 1491–1671
The Opportunities and Limits of Ethnic Soldiering:The Tupis and the Dutch-Portuguese Struggle for the Southern Atlantic, 1630–1657
Deploying Tribes and Clans: Mohawks in Nova Scotia and Scottish Highlanders in Georgia
“Cleansing the Land”: Dutch-Amerindian Cooperation in the Suppression of the 1763 Slave Rebellion in Dutch Guiana