The First Way of War : American War Making on the Frontier, 1607–1814

This 2005 book explores the evolution of Americans' first way of war, to show how war waged against Indian noncombatant population and agricultural resources became the method early Americans employed and, ultimately, defined their military heritage. The sanguinary story of the American conquest of the Indian peoples east of the Mississippi River helps demonstrate how early Americans embraced warfare shaped by extravagant violence and focused on conquest. Grenier provides a major revision in understanding the place of warfare directed on noncombatants in the American military tradition, and his conclusions are relevant to understand US 'special operations' in the War on Terror This book explores the evolution of early Americans' first ways of making war to show how war waged against enemy noncombatant populations and agricultural resources ultimately defined Americans' military heritage. Grenier explains the significance of Americans' earliest wars with both Indians and Europeans, from the seventeenth-century conflicts with the Indians of the Eastern Seaboard, through the imperial wars among England, France, and Spain in the eighteenth century, to frontier Americans' conquest of the Indians of the Transappalachian West in 1814. This sanguinary story of Americans' inexorable march across the first frontiers helps demonstrate how they embraced warfare shaped by extravagant violence and focused on conquest. Grenier provides a major revision in understanding the place of warfare directed at noncombatants in the American military tradition, and his conclusions are relevant to understanding U.S. "special operations" in the War on Terror. Publisher description: This book explores the evolution of American war, showing how the first war waged against Indian noncombatant populations and their agricultural resources became the standard method of war employed by early Americans and which ultimately defined their military heritage. The bloodthirsty American conquest of Indian communities east of the Mississippi River helps demonstrate how early Americans embraced warfare shaped by extravagant violence and focused on conquest. Grenier provides a major revision in understanding the place of warfare directed on noncombatants in the American military tradition, and his conclusions are relevant to understand US 'special operations' in the War on Terror Frontmatter List of Figures and Maps (page viii) Preface (page ix) Acknowledgments (page xi) List of Abbreviations (page xii) Introduction (page 1) 1 The First Way of War's Origins in Colonial America (page 16) 2 The First Way of War in the North American Wars of King George II, 1739-1755 (page 53) 3 Continental and British Petite Guerre, circa 1750 (page 87) 4 The First Way of War in the Seven Years' War, 1754-1763 (page 115) 5 The First Way of War in the Era of the American Revolution (page 146) 6 The First Way of War in the 1790s (page 170) 7 The First Way of War and the Final Conquest of the Transappalachian West (page 204) Epilogue (page 221) Index (page 227) This book explores the evolution of early Americans' first ways of making war to show how war waged against enemy noncombatant populations and agricultural resources ultimately defined Americans' military heritage ... [The author] provides a major revision in understanding the place of warfare directed at noncombatants in the American military tradition, and his conclusions are relevant to understanding U.S. "special operations" in the War on Terror.-p. i Explores how Americans waged war and condoned violence against enemy noncombatants John Grenier. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.