(17) COMANCHE EMPIRE & LAKOTA AMERICA

Yes, yes – they are literally book titles by Pekka Hämäläinen, specialist historian of native North Americans but arguably also empires as historical ideas or at least arguments, although I think that overstates both.

Of the two, the Comanche are the clearer imperial candidate. The Comanche tribal nation occupied territory – known to history as Comancheria – in New Mexico, west Texas and surrounding areas. The argument is that Comancheria, at the peak of its power from the 1750s to the 1850s, comprised an empire or form of imperialism while on the periphery of Spanish, Mexican and American power as well as avoiding the diseases that ravaged other native American tribes.

The game-changer was horses, as it was for the Eurasian nomadic tribes or empires before them, which increased their hunting range for buffalo and mobility for military power.

Eventually disease caught up with them and power of other nations, particularly the United States, moved closer to overwhelm them

The Comanche were not an isolated example as other native American tribes, such as the Lakota in the Great Plains, were able to adapt to the literal use of horsepower to similar effect of the Eurasian nomadic tribes or empires.

It is tempting to imagine a counterfactual where such tribes or tribal confederations swept across the North American plains like latter-day Mongols, but even with their adaptation to horses they were too little and too late in the face of the growing industrial power and population of the United States.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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