A01=Robert G. Parkinson
american frontier
american imperialism
Author_Robert G. Parkinson
Category=JBSL11
Category=NH
Category=NHB
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
Category=WQH
colonialism
colonists
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
heart of darkness
imperialism
joseph conrad
maryland
michael cresap
native american history
ohio river
shickellamy
yellow creek massacre
Product details
- ISBN 9781324123408
- Weight: 370g
- Dimensions: 140 x 211mm
- Publication Date: 10 Feb 2026
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In this startingly original work, Robert Parkinson presents a new account of ever-shifting encounters between white colonists and Native Americans. Drawing skilfully on Joseph Conrad’s famous novella, Heart of Darkness, he demonstrates that imperialism in North America was neither heroic nor a perfectly planned conquest. It was, rather, as bewildering, violent and haphazard as the European colonisation of Africa.
Bringing a Conradian lens to the central episodes of the early American frontier from the 1730s through the American Revolutionary War, Parkinson follows the intertwined histories of two prominent families, one colonial and the other Native, who helped determine the fate of the empires battling for control of the Ohio River Valley. Offers nothing less than a new story of the making of the United States, Parkinson argues that American history is, in fact, tied to the frontier, just not in the ways we are often told. Altering our understanding of the past, he also shows what this new understanding should mean for us today.
Robert G. Parkinson is professor of history at Binghamton University. He is the author of The Common Cause, Thirteen Clocks, and Heart of American Darkness. He lives in Charles Town, West Virginia.
