Description
Book SynopsisBy comparing competing martial cultures and examining violence in the Southwest,
Wars for Empire provides a new understanding of critical decades of American imperial expansion and a moment in the history of settler colonialism with worldwide significance.
Trade ReviewThe question
Wars for Empire poses is why the United States engaged in a forty-year struggle to suppress fewer than 10,000 Apaches following the U.S.-Mexican War. The answers Janne Lahti provides in this book are thought-provoking and a bit unsettling. Lahti argues that whereas Apaches fought for survival, the United States saw the Apache wars as an expression of national unity based on racial and cultural superiority. This well-written study probes motives at once deeply complex and nuanced."" - Kathleen P. Chamberlain, author of
Victorio, Apache Warrior and ChiefThis volume takes the reader into the labyrinth of conflicting interests, failed policies, and ethnocentric drives that characterized the era. With the story covering so large a theatre over so many decades, maps would have made the text more illuminating and easier to follow. Nonetheless, the reader will end up with a good understanding of this sad chapter in American history. -
The Journal of America's Military Past""Any reader seeking to learn why the Apaches could outfight, outrun, and outmaneuver the regulars for so long should begin here."" -
The Journal of Military History
