Creek Internationalism in an Age of Revolution, 1763–1818 by James L. Hill (review)

Reviewed by: Creek Internationalism in an Age of Revolution, 1763–1818 by James L. Hill Kevin Kokomoor Creek Internationalism in an Age of Revolution, 1763–1818. By James L. Hill. Borderlands and Transcultural Studies. ( Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022. Pp. xviii, 303. $65.00, ISBN 978-1-4962-1518-5.) In Creek Internationalism in an Age of Revolution, 1763–1818, James L. Hill makes his contribution to Native history, a field that has seen incredible growth and methodological complexity in the past decade. Hill structures his study around the "overlapping concerns of diplomacy, trade, sovereignty, and autonomy" that influenced Creek political and economic decision-making during the Age of Revolution, which he defines as the period from the close of the French and Indian War to roughly the First Seminole War (p. 4). Hill demonstrates that individual leaders actively used diplomacy and trade throughout this era as they made constant but ever-shifting attempts to secure their communities' interests and assert local or regional autonomy. Hill's first two chapters chart Creek relations with the Spanish, first in the years before and during the American Revolution through connections with Cuba, and second during the turbulent post-Revolutionary period along the Florida coast, where both Creeks and Spaniards confronted the emerging state of Georgia. Chapters 3 and 4 complicate the narrative by focusing on Creek attempts to add British actors, from the Bahamas to Canada to England, to their milieu and engaging familiar faces like William Augustus Bowles and George Wellbank. Chapter 4 in particular adds yet more complexity to this picture, as Hill also describes how multiple individual Creek communities negotiated the contentious 1790 Treaty of New York on their own terms and in the midst of increasing conflict with each other. These communities continued to cultivate either Spanish alliances or British alternatives to an emerging American government. The final two chapters follow this thread through years of tremendous turmoil and bloodshed. Hill examines Creek efforts to stave off American expansionism not only during the Red Stick War, but also during that conflict's aftermath in the Florida peninsula. Hill's narrative ends with an [End Page 550] invasion that scholars usually refer to as the First Seminole War. Yet as he very convincingly suggests, the Red Stick and Seminole Wars were very interconnected. Hill shows how Red Stick refugees, Seminoles, and Miccosukees constantly—and increasingly desperately—sought support from potential allies, including the Spanish, the British, and the Shawnees, in an attempt to stem the tide of American expansionism. Creek Internationalism in an Age of Revolution is well written, expertly researched, and historiographically significant. Hill's research is impressive. For instance, he relies heavily on important, yet still underutilized, Spanish sources. His methodology also strikes an excellent balance. While his work is reminiscent of an older "'playoff' diplomacy" scholarship, he challenges this approach by making it clear that Creek interests, rather than European ones, drove Creek decision-makers (p. 16). Yet Hill also does an excellent job of describing the complexity of Creek community politics without getting bogged down in debates on the importance of kinship, providing a needed corrective to recent Creek studies that place too much importance on cultural traditions of governance, and not enough emphasis on the geopolitics that Creeks certainly understood. At the same time, Hill is also critical of recent studies that suggest that Creeks were undertaking a European-style nation-building project. The framework of "Creek internationalism" allows Hill to negotiate these conflicting arguments without forcing him to hitch the proverbial wagon to any one of them, which is perhaps this book's greatest strength. While my concerns with Creek Internationalism in an Age of Revolution are few and far between, the most significant one concerns the regional nature of this study. While Hill frames his work as a general look at Creek diplomacy, the vast majority takes place among Lower Creek communities along the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers, and then with Miccosukees and Seminoles in the now-limits of Florida. Coverage is so uneven at times that in many ways this study really applies only to a particular region of a very sprawling Creek Country. This is a product of his...

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