Dangerous Ground
Squatters, Statesmen, and the Antebellum Rupture of American Democracy
- Publisher's listprice GBP 31.49
-
15 044 Ft (14 327 Ft + 5% VAT)
The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.
- Discount 10% (cc. 1 504 Ft off)
- Discounted price 13 539 Ft (12 894 Ft + 5% VAT)
Subcribe now and take benefit of a favourable price.
Subscribe
15 044 Ft
Availability
Estimated delivery time: In stock at the publisher, but not at Prospero's office. Delivery time approx. 3-5 weeks.
Not in stock at Prospero.
Why don't you give exact delivery time?
Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.
Product details:
- Publisher OUP USA
- Date of Publication 11 August 2022
- ISBN 9780197531426
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages296 pages
- Size 163x237x27 mm
- Weight 617 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 11 black and white halftones 236
Categories
Short description:
Dangerous Ground examines how white squatters in the American West came to occupy a central and destabilizing position in US political culture in the decades culminating in the Civil War.
MoreLong description:
The squatter--defined by Noah Webster as "one that settles on new land without a title"--had long been a fixture of America's frontier past. In the antebellum period, white squatters propelled the Jacksonian Democratic Party to dominance and the United States to the shores of the Pacific. In a bold reframing of the era's political history, John Suval explores how Squatter Democracy transformed the partisan landscape and the map of North America, hastening clashes that ultimately sundered the nation.
With one eye on Washington and the other on flashpoints across the West, Dangerous Ground tracks squatters from the Mississippi Valley and cotton lands of Texas, to Oregon, Gold Rush-era California, and, finally, Bleeding Kansas. The sweeping narrative reveals how claiming western domains became stubbornly intertwined with partisan politics and fights over the extension of slavery. While previous generations of statesmen had maligned and sought to contain illegal settlers, Democrats celebrated squatters as pioneering yeomen and encouraged their land grabs through preemption laws, Indian removal, and hawkish diplomacy. As America expanded, the party's power grew. The US-Mexican War led many to ask whether these squatters were genuine yeomen or forerunners of slavery expansion. Some northern Democrats bolted to form the Free Soil Party, while southerners denounced any hindrance to slavery's spread. Faced with a fracturing party, Democratic leaders allowed territorial inhabitants to determine whether new lands would be slave or free, leading to a destabilizing transfer of authority from Congress to frontier settlers. Squatters thus morphed from agents of Manifest Destiny into foot soldiers in battles that ruptured the party and the country.
Deeply researched and vividly written, Dangerous Ground illuminates the overlooked role of squatters in the United States' growth into a continent-spanning juggernaut and in the onset of the Civil War, casting crucial light on the promises and vulnerabilities of American democracy.
A novel contribution to the literature on settler colonialism...Dangerous Ground is an extensively researched, convincingly argued, and readable political history with a fascinating dash of cultural history.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Tale of Two Squatters
Ch. 1. Squatter Democracy
Ch. 2. Bad Birds
Ch. 3. Crockett, Hard Cider, and the Whigs' Rustic Turn
Ch. 4. "Great American Measures" and the Election of 1844
Ch. 5. Manufacturing Destiny
Ch. 6. Sacramento's Squatter Riot and the Aftershocks of Manifest Destiny
Ch. 7. A Squatter's-Eye View of Bleeding Kansas
Ch. 8. Squatterdom
Ch. 9. The Ordeal of the Squatter King
Epilogue: George Bush's America
Notes
Bibliography
Index
