Has anyone ever read The Divided Dominion by Ethan A. Schmidt?
I've been reading it a lot lately as part of a project i've had about Bacon's rebellion. I've found it quite interesting in some aspects, but there are some questionable qualities. For one, i'm not sure if the author is as familiar with Early Modern English politics as he thinks he is, as i have found him slipping-up on the subject. For instance, at one point within the book, he described the English Civil Wars as a conflict between Puritans and Anglicans, which is two mistakes in one sentence: the first being that Puritans were a movement within the Anglican Church and not outside it (excepting the separatists of course), the second being that these wars were centered around constitutional issues rather than religious ones. Another issue is that he doesn't seem familiar with the system of alliances between different Indian Tribes during this period. He talks about when Nathaniel Bacon, during Bacon's rebellion, marched towards the Occaneechi fort. He portrays events so that they were force by Bacon and his men to find the Susquehannocks that were living amongst them and to kill them. However, this conflicts with James D. Rice's description of events in his article, Bacon's Rebellion in Indian Country, where he points out that the Susquehannocks were the Occaneechi's trade rivals, and that when Bacon and his men approached, they willingly offered to kill the Susquehannocks at his behest. I think that this shows that either he wanted to portray the Indians in a positive light (which seems unlikely given his frankness in describing the use of ritual torture by Algonquian tribes during the Anglo-Powhatan Wars) or that he was just wasn't familiar with the relations between different tribes at this time. If anyone else have ever read this book, do you think it can be considered a credible source?
Want to leave a comment?