Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building

By Richard Drinnon and Drinnon

Book Overview

American expansion, says Richard Drinnon, is characterized by repression and racism. In his reinterpretation of "winning" the West, Drinnon links racism with colonialism and traces this interrelationship from the Pequot War in New England, through American expansion westward to the Pacific, and beyond to the Philippines and Vietnam. He cites parallels between the slaughter of bison on the Great Plains and the defoliation of Vietnam and notes similarities in the language of aggression used in the American West, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452006325
• ISBN13: 9780452006324
• Release Date: October 1980
• Publisher: Plume Books
• Length: 571 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant, eye opening and well-researched

A very good analysis, ocassioanlly one-sided, but the side he takes is that of the weak.

A work of incredible historical significance.

"To all appearances," wrote Richard Drinnon, "it all began innocently enough with a first victim" (Indian-Hating 35). Indeed, in Drinnon's 'Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building,'those first victims finally have the chance to tell their story through the records of their conquerors. From John Endicott's war on the Niantics and Pequots, to the horrors of the My Lai massacre, Drinnon illustrates, with passion, power and unrelenting wit, how Indian-hating in the Americas became a national pastime, and how that same hate was turned against the native populations of the Phillipines and Southeast Asia. A tremendous feat of scholarship that should not be missed.