Eric Hinderaker

Professor of History at the University of Utah, Eric Hinderaker is an historian of early North America with a particular interest in early modern empires and comparative colonization. He explores the ways that European empires negotiated and legitimized their authority in colonial settings. One dimension of this process relates to Indians: how did empires secure Indian lands, incorporate Indians as subordinate populations, and recruit them as allies, and how did Indians respond to those efforts? Another relates to colonists: how was authority expressed by the empire and contested by localities? From this perspective, events that seem quite different from each other--an Indian treaty, say, and the Boston Massacre--turn out to have similar underlying structures.

Lecture topics:

• British-Native American Diplomacy in a Transatlantic Context
• Boston's Massacre: Narrative, Memory, Meaning
• The Two Hendricks: Unraveling a Mohawk Mystery

Viewed Saturday, November 21, 2009