An American Genocide
 | |
| Author | Benjamin Madley |
|---|---|
| Subject | California Genocide |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Yale University Press |
Publication date | 27 June 2017 |
| ISBN | 9780300230697 |
An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 is a 2017 non-fiction book about the California genocide by history professor Benjamin Madley.
Background and publication
[edit]An American Genocide was the first book to fully document the U.S. government-sanctioned California Genocide.[1] The book was published by Yale University Press[2] and is used by Yale University.[1]
The 692 page book[2] was published on 27 June 2017.[1] It was written by Benjamin Madley, a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles.[2]
Synopsis
[edit]The chronologically arranged[3] book documents the United States-government's role in the 19th-century California genocide. The book details killing of Native Americans by the Americans who violently colonised California. It gives the pre-1846 history in which Spanish colonisers used Native Americans as a source of low-cost labour, and how Native Americans suffered from both disease and land theft. When the Americans arrived, they started a program of genocidal extermination, killing 80% of the Native American population, who lacked access to firearms.[2] The book reports on the slavery that Americans subjected Native American women and the abuse of children:
“[Some] white men came. They killed my grandfather and my mother and my father. . . . Then they killed my baby sister and cut her heart out and threw it in the brush where I ran and hid.”[2]
The book's author names the actions as genocidal[4][2] and devotes 200 pages of the book[2] to documenting almost every killing that took place during the time period that the book covers.[5]
Critical reception
[edit]The book won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for History in 2016 and was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.[1]
In 2018, Pacific Historical Review described the book as "monumental."[5] The Journal of the Early Republic described it as "impressive" and praised the author for the quality of his research.[3]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d "An American Genocide". Yale University Press. Retrieved 2023-06-11.
- ^ a b c d e f g Taylor, Alan (2016-05-27). "'An American Genocide,' by Benjamin Madley". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-06-11.
- ^ a b Lindsay, Brendan (2018). "An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 by Benjamin Madley (review)". Journal of the Early Republic. 38 (1): 195–198. doi:10.1353/jer.2018.0024. ISSN 1553-0620. S2CID 149111457.
- ^ Angus, Charlie (2022). Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower. Canada: House of Anansi Press, ISBN 9781487009496 pp. 38–43
- ^ a b Review: An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 by Benjamin Madley, by Stacey L. Smith, Pacific Historical Review (2018) 87 (1): 210–212, doi:10.1525/phr.2018.87.1.210 p210
