The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity [Paperback]

Jill Lepore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0375702628 | ISBN-13: 978-0375702624

Winner of the the 1998 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award of the Phi Beta Kappa Society

King Philip's War, the excruciating racial war--colonists against Indians--that erupted in New England in 1675, was, in proportion to population, the bloodiest in American history. Some even argued that the massacres and outrages on both sides were too horrific to "deserve the name of a war."

It all began when Philip (called Metacom by his own people), the leader of the Wampanoag Indians, led attacks against English towns in the colony of Plymouth. The war spread quickly, pitting a loose confederation of southeastern Algonquians against a coalition of English colonists. While it raged, colonial armies pursued enemy Indians through the swamps and woods of New England, and Indians attacked English farms and towns from Narragansett Bay to the Connecticut River Valley. Both sides, in fact, had pursued the war seemingly without restraint, killing women and children, torturing captives, and mutilating the dead. The fighting ended after Philip was shot, quartered, and beheaded in August 1676.

The war's brutality compelled the colonists to defend themselves against accusations that they had become savages. But Jill Lepore makes clear that it was after the war--and because of it--that the boundaries between cultures, hitherto blurred, turned into rigid ones. King Philip's War became one of the most written-about wars in our history, and Lepore argues that the words strengthened and hardened feelings that, in turn, strengthened and hardened the enmity between Indians and Anglos. She shows how, as late as the nineteenth century, memories of the war were instrumental in justifying Indian removals--and how in our own century that same war has inspired Indian attempts to preserve "Indianness" as fiercely as the early settlers once struggled to preserve their Englishness.

Telling the story of what may have been the bitterest of American conflicts, and its reverberations over the centuries, Lepore has enabled us to see how the ways in which we remember past events are as important in their effect on our history as were the events themselves.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In 1675, tensions between Native Americans and colonists residing in New England erupted into the brutal conflict that has come to be known as King Philip's War, named after Philip, the leader of the Wampanoag Indians. Jill Lepore's book is an evocative and insightful study of America's recollection and understanding of one of the bloodiest wars to take place on its soil.

Lepore, an assistant professor of history at Boston University, depicts the horrors of this conflict, from gruesome tortures to the massacre of women and children, so explicitly barbaric that the term "war" barely applies. An underlying theme of her narrative is that this unfortunate battle only served to strengthen the boundaries of cultural difference between the Native Americans and colonists, setting a rigid foundation for the many years of enmity between Indians and Anglos that would ensue.

Skillfully drawing on accounts of substance from participants on both sides, Lepore presents a balanced overview of the causes and effects of this conflict and the reverberations it would have over the centuries to follow, ultimately revealing that how a past event is interpreted is often just as important as the event itself. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Shortly before his death in 1675, John Sassamon warned the governor of Plymouth Colony that Philip, a Wampanoag Indian leader, was about to attack English settlers. When Sassamon was found dead, indications pointed to murder. Three Wampanoag Indians were tried, convicted, and executed. Days later, Philip and his followers began attacking and destroying one English settlement after another. Colonial armies retaliated, killing Indian warriors on the battlefield and their families in the villages. Rather than providing a battle-by-battle description, Lepore (history, Boston Univ.) presents the war through the diaries, books, articles, and dramas written about it. Her major theme is that wars and their histories cannot be separated. Wars generate their own narratives, serving to define the geographical, political, cultural, and national boundaries between warring peoples. A unique approach to historical interpretation, this book will appeal to academic libraries and those that specialize in early American history. (Illustrations not seen.)?Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., Metamora
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (April 27, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375702628
• ISBN-13: 978-0375702624
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #55 in Books > History > Americas > Native American
  • #57 in Books > History > Americas > United States > Colonial Period

More About the Author

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale in 1995. Her first book, "The Name of War," won the Bancroft Prize; her 2005 book, "New York Burning," was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2008 she published "Blindspot," a mock eighteenth-century novel, jointly written with Jane Kamensky. Lepore's most recent book, "The Whites of Their Eyes," is a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Warning-Not really about King Philip's War, June 29, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (Paperback)

Be warned, if you're looking for a history of King Philip's War then this is not the book for you. Instead what Lepore is investigating is the ways that colonial New Englanders conceived of the war and, by extension their identity. As part of the new wave of cultural history that is coming out of the universities this book represents what is great and frustrating about that movement. On one level the book is, at times, a great look at how early white New Englanders conceived of their identity, the lengths to which they would go to defend this identity, and the ways in which they would justify this defense. Like great cultural history it gives us a vivid peak into the minds of the people it studies, thereby giving us a better understanding of how they thought and lived. On the other hand the book is, at times, frustrating in that it contains elements of the worst aspects of post modern history. Lepore gets carried away sometimes and lets her study drift too far into the realms of philosophy or literary criticism. Two examples I think illustrate this trend. At one point Lepore spends several pages in a great examination of the contradiction that the colonists felt: on one hand they feared that proximity to the native Americans would turn them into savages, on the other hand if they moved to exterminate the natives then they would lose that quality of justice and mercy that defined them as Englishmen. After laying out this excurtiating argument Lepore tritely concludes that the solution to the problem was that the Colonists would wage a war against the natives and then write histories of it that would justify their actions. While this is undoubtedly what happened it doesn't pass muster as a historical solution to the colonists dillema. While it makes literary and, to some degree logical, sense to us the solution Lepore provides isn't one that a colonist genuinely in a moral quandry would use. The very cynicism of the strategem makes it a violation of the moral guidelines that the colonists saw themselves as possesing. Another example is in a description of a New Englander who visits the bones of King Philip on display and steals Philips jawbone. Lepore asks why he did that instead of some other act of defilement such as breaking the skull or spitting on it. Her conclusion is that the man stole the jaw in order to shut Philip up. Again, while this is an apt literary analysis, it seems dubious that the thief was motivated by a desire to symbolicly shut up the skull. It could just as easily be true that the man wanted a souvenir and that the jawbone was the most easily removed piece of the skull. History is not literature and while the new trend of postmodernism and cultural history can provide us with a lot of insight into the past authors must be careful to avoid the mistakes that Lepore makes in treating historical documents as PURELY literary works without any connection to real people or events. Still for these few flaws Lepore has produced an interesting and useful book. As a stand alone about King Philips war it is limited in it's usefullness but in conjunction with another book about the war or a history of early New England it provides us with an informative glimpse into the mind of early Americans.

35 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A vivid and engrossing account of King Philip's War., October 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (Hardcover)

Three centuries ago, New England Native Americans were forced into war with the English colonists who had been gradually destroying the native economy by stealing their land, interfering with their hunting, fishing, and farming, etc. The resulting war, known as King Philip's War, decimated the English population and very nearly rid New England of whites entirely. English technology and European diseases ultimately won out over theWampanoags and their allies; there was never again an "Indian threat" in New England. "The Name of War" recounts the struggle as told in English accounts; official documents, diaries, and letters. Author Jill Lepore makes the point that history is always written by the victor. What makes the retelling of King Philip's War so one-sided is the fact that the conquered, the Native American tribes, had no written language in which to tell their side of the story. Very few natives of that time could read or write English and, if they left any accounts of the war, they have never been discovered. Lepore goes on to show that what subsequent generations of Americans thought about the war was based entirely on the writings of the colonists and later, anglo scholars and writers. Their view of the Native American ranged from pagan devil-worshippers, as shown by the Mathers and other early religious leaders, to Noble Savage (Cooper) and finally, Vanishing American (The Curse of Metamora). These attitudes, calcified in books and plays, became the stones upon which later White treatment of Indian nations in other parts of the country were based. The final confrontation at Wounded Knee two hundred years after King Philip's War, had its birth in the earliest chronicles of the seventeent-century. This book is a must for all who want to understand the basis for the disastrous Indian-White relations of the last three centuries .For those of us who make a living through writing, the book reminds us of the power of words and theawesome responsibility authors have to use those words wisely.

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing Analysis of War and Cultural Identity, March 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (Paperback)

If you are looking for a narrative history of King Philip's War, you will not find it here. Instead you will find something much more interesting and more important: an intelligent analysis of the cultural issues that caused the war, caused it to be fought in the way it was, and caused it to be treated in contemporary writing as it was. It not only explicates how the New Englanders of the time "justified" their conduct of the war, and their conduct toward the Native Americans generally, but also reasons or speculates persuasively on how the Native Americans viewed the same events. Readers more familiar with the chronological "facts" of the war might find the book somewhat more accessible, but such knowledge isn't a prerequisite to understanding its purpose and argument. Even if one has little knowledge of the war's events, this book is a rich and insightful read for anyone taking it on its own terms. Be forewarned, however: many of the insights regarding New England's European ancestors are neither flattering nor inspiring.