America’s Hundred Years’ War: U.S. Expansion to the Gulf Coast and the Fate of the Seminole, 1763-1858

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“These essays explore the context and meaning of the three Seminole Wars in a way that illustrates how the conflicts intersected the mainstream of American history. America’s longest wars truly impacted the country’s national development.”–Gene Allen Smith, coeditor of “Nexus of Empire: Negotiating Loyalty and Identity in the Revolutionary Borderlands, 1760s-1820s” “This book makes several important contributions to the history and ethnohistory of the Seminole Wars. This may be the first time a book has placed the wars with the Seminoles in such detailed American political context.”–Gregory A. Waselkov, author of ” A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813-1814″ Conventional history narratives tell us that in the early years of the Republic, the United States fought three wars against the Seminole Indians and two against the Creeks. However, William Belko and the contributors to “America’s Hundred Years’ War” argue that we would do better to view these events as moments of heightened military aggression punctuating a much longer period of conflict in the Gulf Coast region. Featuring essays on topics ranging from international diplomacy to Seminole military strategy, the volume urges us to reconsider the reasons for and impact of early U.S. territorial expansion. It highlights the actions and motivations of Indians and African Americans during the period and establishes the groundwork for research that is more balanced and looks beyond the hopes and dreams of whites. “America’s Hundred Years’ War” offers more than a chronicle of the politics and economics of international rivalry. It provides a narrative of humanity and inhumanity, arrogance and misunderstanding, and outright bloodshed between vanquisher and vanquished as well. William S. Belko is associate professor of history at the University of West Florida.