This is the American history book that I have been waiting for, which spells out the foundation of the United States based on white supremacy.
I have long wondered how Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Purchase from France. How did France have this land from which the U.S. could purchase it?
The Doctrine of Discovery also guided Thomas Jefferson---lawyer trained in the legal tradition built on it's logic---in his approach to the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. He knew that the agreement was technically an acquisition of France's discovery rights (the right to preemptive title of France's discovery rights (the right to preemptive title to this vast tract of land against other European claims) rather than a purchase of the land itself, which remained occupied by indigenous people. And he understood that this logic any subsequent violence toward and displacement of Native Americans in that territory as the US sought to convert it's discovery rights into a claim of complete title through occupancy. P. 20
The abduction and enslavement of millions of Africans was, like the killing and deportation of Indigenous people, rooted in the vision of European and Christian superiority captured in the Doctrine of Discovery. The brutal treatment of the two groups supported the same ends: the securing of land and the exploitation of its resources exclusively for people of European descent. Genocide and exile of Indigenous people were key to the former, and enslavement of Africans secured the latte. P. 45
The leaders of the Confederacy saw their project as the culmination of the divine promise of Euro-Christian domination in the Doctrine of Discovery. P. 45
Mississippi instituted its infamous Black Codes in 1865 to keep Blacks dependent on their former masters and incapable of living independently. P. 47
While the Louisiana Purchase is often taught in American history courses as one the great real estate bargains in world history (the price worked out to less than four cents per acre) this conclusion relies on a critical misunderstanding about the nature of transaction. This vast territory under consideration isn't under the control of the French government or the colonists. Rather it remained---as it had been for thousands of years---tthe homeland of various Native American nations who were mostly oblivious to the transatlantic dealmaking. In short, the vaunted Louisiana Purchase didn't secure a single legal title to a bounded section of earth Rather it codified the transfer from France to the United States of the right to assert dominion over Native people in that area without interference or competition from other European powers. What the US purchased from France, in the language of the Doctrine of Discovery, was not property but the right to "preemption," the "exclusive authority to obtain Indian title by conquest or contract" within agreed-upon geographic boundaries. P. 122
How Minnesota was settled by Europeans: by conquest and cheating the indigenous peoples out of their lands. P. 123
With statehood achieved in 1858, with Native Americans lands seized, the Dakota people first decimate and then deported just five years later Minnesota was poised to be the embodiment of the dream of an idealized new Zion, a new promised land for European Christian settler colonists. P. 137
Minnesota attempted from the beginning to be an all-white state. P. 138
THE LAND AND EARLY PEOPLES
As a political entity, the land we know today as Oklahoma is a remnant It was formed after other territories and states had been carved out of the vast Louisiana Purchase, of which it was a part. Before it succumbed to the legal and extralegal machinations of white settler colonists, this area was imagined by the U.S. government as a solution to the "Indian problem" east of the Mississippi River. Known as Indian Country, it served as a designated refugee zone for Indigenous peoples as they were forcibly driven out of the Southeast as European settler colonists pushed Red people west to make room for white crops and black slaves. P. 183
The geographical boundaries of the state reflect this historical circumstance. P. 184
Oklahoma is a state of unpredictable extremes. P. 184
Coronado and De Soto claimed Oklahoma under the Doctrine of Discovery for Spain. P. 185
Tulsa, Oklahoma called itself "The Magic City" as it grew rapidly in the early 20th Century after the discovery of oil which helped finance the US in WWI. P. 208
Methodist Bishop Mouzon's sermon is our White Racism 101 like today. P. 214
The prelude to the Tulsa Race Riot is bone chilling. The sad thing is that it could happen today. P.215
It started from such a small beginning but typical---white woman making a charge against a black man.
The Tulsa Race Riot took place on May31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents systematically attacked Black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It began with white 17 yr white girl accusing a 19 yr old black man of assaulting her. Wow, a familiar enough beginning in what was likely a powder keg town. P. 215-216
Over the years as Tulsa reinvented itself as a progressive, sophisticated city, the sordid episode of the Tulsa Race Riot was swept from city history. P. 228
Tocqueville is a gifted sociological observer, but he cannot deal with the slavery problem and the Doctrine of Discovery. P. 292
I cannot handle a detailed study of Tocqueville.
We have not traveled very far from Toqueville's America. The spirit of the Doctrine of Discovery haunts is still. Are we a pluralistic democracy or a divinely ordained promised for White European Christians. Most certainly still an open question.
The long arm of the Law of Discovery extends even to day. P. 296
Republican politics---Trumpism---is an attempt to sustain the Law of Discovery. P. 297
Teaching an honest and full history of the United States seems like an impossible thing now. P.297
What we are seeing today today is a desperate attempt to protect the innocent Doctrine of Discovery view of American origins. P. 298
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