“An important book that offers useful theory and impactful insight into how settler colonialism is integral not only to democratic theory in the United States but to other settler colonial nations too.”—H-Net Reviews
“Empire of the People explicitly explicates the settler-colonialist subtexts beneath almost every aspect of post-1776 US politics and culture. Dahl contextualizes his use of Settler Colonial Theory by rereading older colonial theorists, and not only the oft-studied Locke and Rousseau, but also figures less known to Americanists, such as Edward Gibbon Wakefield.”—Early American Literature
“Dahl outlines theories of colonial dispossession that facilitate the ideological obfuscation of conquest, a foundational violence that ‘establishes the basis of democratic sovereignty.’”—Native American and Indigenous Studies
"A thought-provoking book."—Transmotion
"Dahl makes an important contribution to settler-colonial studies by providing an incisive, deeply informative ,and thoroughly convincing ‘ideological history’ of the settler-colonial foundations of American democratic thought."—Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"Dahl presents a complex and intriguing theory of American historical development."—Choice
Empire of the People is a capacious tour de force. In a sweeping historical account, Dahl illuminates the violent structure of settler colonialism in the United States. The chapters explore, and powerfully unsettle, prevailing assumptions in American political thought, vividly taking stock of the narratives of native absence that underpin the democratic thought in the west. The book is an impressive contribution to the florescence of counter-narratives that are preparing new ground for an urgent and emergent political theory of decolonization.—Alexander Keller Hirsch, University of Alaska
“What if the foundation of democracy is not ‘the people’ but the dispossession of land from its rightful inhabitants? Adam Dahl transforms our understandings of American political thought, showing how it deliberately ignores Native American presence and practices. Dahl deftly illuminates how democratic theory—from Jefferson to Tocqueville to Emerson—cannot be separated from its settler-colonial roots. By turning to the Pequot theorist William Apess, Dahl identifies a solution—to take indigenous thinking and nations seriously as alternative, equal nations.”—Kennan Ferguson, director of the Center for 21st Century Studies, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
“What is the relation between democracy and colonial dispossession? Adam Dahl critically examines this question through a close study of democratic theory in nineteenth-century Anglo-America. Bringing together familiar figures such as Emerson, Whitman, and Tocqueville with a complex array of lesser known texts and authors, Dahl expertly demonstrates how the US tradition of democratic thought was forged in and through the systematic expropriation of indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands. Most important and innovative, however, is his serious engagement with indigenous political thinkers, including William Apess, Black Hawk, and Elias Boudinot, who laid bare the paradoxes of this ‘democracy dispossession.’ As such, Empire of the People functions as both contribution to, and indictment of, American political thought.”—Robert Nichols, McKnight Land-Grant Professor in Political Theory, University of Minnesota
