Gene A. Smith

Sylvia L. Hilton

"Featuring compelling biographical essays on individuals from the key groups who experienced the rapid shifts in national boundaries in the Gulf region, this work opens an exciting new perspective on the problems of identity and loyalty in a transnational world."--Rafe Blaufarb, author of Bonapartists in the Borderlands "A sparkling set of insightful essays that illuminates the interplay of natives, settlers, maroons, and slaves in a in a pivotal borderland contested by rival empires. Local, imperial, and racial identities overlapped in a shifting kaleidoscope of power, resistance, and adaptation."--Alan Taylor, author of The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution Between 1760 and 1820, many groups in North America grappled with differences of identity, nationality, and loyalty tested by revolutionary challenges. Less dramatic, perhaps, but no less important were the stories of individuals redefining themselves as they struggled to survive and prosper in times of both war and peace. Nexus of Empire turns the focus on the people who inhabited one of the continent's most dynamic borderlands-- the Gulf of Mexico region--where nations and empires competed for increasingly important strategic and commercial advantages. The essays in this collection do not focus primarily on national groups or large military conflicts. Instead, they examine the personal experiences of men and women, Native Americans, European colonists, free people of color, and slaves, analyzing the ways in which these individuals defined and redefined themselves amid a world of competing loyalties. With its biographical approach, this volume humanizes the promise and perils of living, working, and fighting in a region experiencing constant political upheaval and economic uncertainties. It offers intriguing glimpses into a fast-changing world in which individuals' attitudes and actions reveal the convoluted balancing acts of identities that characterized this population and this era. [cut this last paragraph for length if necessary]

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