Scouting for Empire: Indian Country Abroad, 1876-1916

FAIN: FB-58269-15

Katharine Sara Bjork
Hamline University (Saint Paul, MN 55104-1205)

Scouting for Empire tells the story of U.S. expansion from the domestic frontier to a new overseas empire by following the careers of three army officers from the last Indian Wars to the Punitive Expedition into Mexico in 1916. Hugh L. Scott, John J. Pershing, and Robert L. Bullard all graduated from West Point in the 1870s and 80s. The book shows how they were all shaped as soldiers and as future colonial officials by their formative experiences of what each of them referred to as "Indian Country." After the Spanish-American War all three played important roles in military governments in Cuba and the Philippines and in the occupation of northern Mexico, where they drew on their experiences of frontier warfare and diplomacy and especially on ways of interacting with racial others. The study expands our understanding of the continuities between domestic and overseas expansion by focusing on the importance of individual perceptions, calculations and contingencies.