The Comanche Empire

Pekka Hamalainen

Oct 2008 · Yale University Press

About this ebook

A groundbreaking history of the rise and decline of the vast and imposing Native American empire. 
 
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a Native American empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence. Yet, until now, the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in American history.
 
This compelling and original book uncovers the lost story of the Comanches. It is a story that challenges the idea of indigenous peoples as victims of European expansion and offers a new model for the history of colonial expansion, colonial frontiers, and Native-European relations in North America and elsewhere. Pekka Hämäläinen shows in vivid detail how the Comanches built their unique empire and resisted European colonization, and why they fell to defeat in 1875. With extensive knowledge and deep insight, the author brings into clear relief the Comanches’ remarkable impact on the trajectory of history.
 
2009 Winner of the Bancroft Prize in American History
 
“Cutting-edge revisionist western history…. Immensely informative, particularly about activities in the eighteenth century.”—Larry McMurtry, The New York Review of Books
 
“Exhilarating…a pleasure to read…. It is a nuanced account of the complex social, cultural, and biological interactions that the acquisition of the horse unleashed in North America, and a brilliant analysis of a Comanche social formation that dominated the Southern Plains.”—Richard White, author of The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815

Ratings and reviews

Poorly organized, repetitive, and internally contradictory. Imposes a 21st-century narrative framework on the motives and actions of 18th and 19th century figures. Glosses the sources and events that demonstrate the chaotic and random nature of frontier violence to suggest a sophisticated combination of motivation, strategy and tactics that are rarely found even in 21st century international relationships. Other works are available that fully credit the reach, power, and impact of the Commanche in the 17th through 19th century Southwest of North America without the shortcomings of this effort.

About the author

Pekka Hämäläinen is the Rhodes Professor of American History and Fellow of St. Catherine’s College at Oxford University. He has served as the principal investigator of a five-year project on nomadic empires in world history, funded by the European Research Council. Hämäläinen is the author of Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power, also published by Yale University Press.