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An American Genocide

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An American Genocide
AuthorBenjamin Madley
SubjectCalifornia Genocide
GenreNon-fiction
PublisherYale University Press
Publication date
27 June 2017
ISBN9780300230697

An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 is a 2017 non-fiction book about the California genocide by history professor Benjamin Madley.

Background and publication

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An American Genocide was the first book to fully document the U.S. government-sanctioned California Genocide.[1] The book was published by Yale University Press[2] and is used by Yale University.[1]

The 692 page book[2] was published on 27 June 2017.[1] It was written by Benjamin Madley, a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles.[2]

Synopsis

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The chronologically arranged[3] book documents the United States-government's role in the 19th-century California genocide. The book details killing of Native Americans by the Americans who violently colonised California. It gives the pre-1846 history in which Spanish colonisers used Native Americans as a source of low-cost labour, and how Native Americans suffered from both disease and land theft. When the Americans arrived, they started a program of genocidal extermination, killing 80% of the Native American population, who lacked access to firearms.[2] The book reports on the slavery that Americans subjected Native American women and the abuse of children:

“[Some] white men came. They killed my grandfather and my mother and my father. . . . Then they killed my baby sister and cut her heart out and threw it in the brush where I ran and hid.”[2]

The book's author names the actions as genocidal[4][2] and devotes 200 pages of the book[2] to documenting almost every killing that took place during the time period that the book covers.[5]

Critical reception

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The book won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for History in 2016 and was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.[1]

In 2018, Pacific Historical Review described the book as "monumental."[5] The Journal of the Early Republic described it as "impressive" and praised the author for the quality of his research.[3]

References

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