Matthew J. Flynn

I was offered this book through LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review.

A broad-based approach to explaining the dynamics of the European explorers, colonists, military and, the native population of America. The book covers a lot of ground, beginning in Jamestown, Va., and ending around Wounded Knee. Politics, expansionism, military strategy and cultural/sociological elements are some of the many points discussed. That said, this is a short book, and the reader should expect nothing more than an overview of the subject. This would be a great starting point for anyone interested in the subject matter. Recommended.… (mere)

This is a history of the takeover of North America by Europeans. It is framed as a military action by the United States (and its predecessors) against Native American tribes acting as “insurgents.” It’s accurate and straightforward, but I’m not sure I see the point of this new history. By favoring the military model as an explanation, the book minimizes some of the main avenues by which the continent was “pacified,” such as depletion of game animals, the introduction of farming to the prairie, and the spread of railroads. It is also not clear that the Native American resistance can be classified as an insurgence, given the times and distances over which it took place and the philosophy of warfare they employed. The book does discuss all these issues, but doesn’t make the case for re-evaluating the entirety of the conflict in terms of counterinsurgency operations. In the end I don’t see it displacing other, more complete histories of Natives in North America.… (mere)

Trying to cover almost 300 years of history in a 200-page book is impossible to do in depth. "Settle and Conquer" does not try to address any single nation or region in tremendous depth. Instead, the author uses the history of European colonists' and later white Americans' interactions with Native American peoples as a backdrop to talk about a variety of issues connected to counterinsurgency (COIN) theory and practice. There are no footnotes, although there is a bibliography. The book starts more or less with Chief Powhatan and Jamestown in 1607-8, and ends the span of its history with the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Throughout this book, the author discusses the interactions between regular Army and volunteer/paramilitary/militia/settler forces, their interactions with various Native peoples, and lists some of the thinking and motives behind colonial, American federal, and various Native political decisions and thinking. The author does not pretend to make this book about any one individual or nation, and indeed a reader wanting any real specifics should look elsewhere.

It is also clear from the way the material is presented and the questions the author asks that the purpose of the book is, as much as anything else, intended to get readers to think about American approaches to COIN. Various crimes committed by both sides are mentioned, as is the Army's inability to prevent white settlers from picking fights with and trying to slaughter Native people everywhere they went. Frontiersmen, Texas Rangers, mountain men, explorers and militias all get brief descriptions, although a few individuals (Kit Carson, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett) get more than others. Some mention is made of the hypocrisy of creating an "Empire of Liberty" by wiping out peoples who are trying to live freely, the inclination of various settler groups to kill off Native peoples, the role of demographic change in defeating Native people, and interpretations of "shock and awe" and "winning hearts and minds", as well as other COIN-related issues. Strong points of both sides' military traditions are mentioned - for instance, Native warriors frequently were superior to their white counterparts for a variety of reasons, but white units had stronger chains of command and a greater ability to act in unison. Plus, after enough time had passed, the sheer numbers of white colonials and (later) Americans meant that it was impossible for the Natives to stop them - doing so would have required an immense amount of unity that the various Native nations never had..

The closing chapter demonstrates that the book is aimed as much or more at COIN theorists and military thinkers than at historians or Western buffs. Considering that the author works for the Command and Staff College at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, it seems likely that the intended audience is military personnel and civilian government employees involved in COIN, but there is value in this book for anyone who wants a different and much broader approach to colonist/American-Native military history than is frequently found in books focusing on individual nations or shorter time periods.… (mere)