{"title":"\"Neither Utterly to Reject Them, Nor Yet to Drawe Them to Come In\": Tributary Subordination and Settler Colonialism in Virginia","authors":"Dylan Ruediger","doi":"10.1353/eam.2020.0002","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This essay explores tributary relationships between colonists and Algonquian peoples in seventeenth-century Virginia, placing the process of political subordination into familiar narratives of indigenous dispossession. Virginia's tributary system—a political and legal institution founded in 1646 at the conclusion of the third Anglo-Powhatan war—created a colonial order in which Indian communities became subordinated but largely autonomous polities within a composite imperial state. This idea of tribute, a form of what Hugo Grotius called an \"unequal alliance,\" had roots in Algonquian political traditions and the emerging European literature on international law. Drawing on these lineages, this essay provides a framework for thinking about how the tributary system developed in the decades between 1646 and 1676. The legal and political distance separating tributaries from colonists proved to be an important tool for indigenous communities struggling to maintain communal identity, but provided colonists with a flexible means of effecting dispossession. Though colonists' resentment of the slender protections Governor William Berkeley afforded tributaries erupted into civil war in 1676, Bacon's Rebellion failed to destroy the tributary system. It was reestablished at the Treaty of the Middle Plantation in 1677, which still provides the legal framework for Indian relations in the state of Virginia.","PeriodicalId":43255,"journal":{"name":"Early American Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2020-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Early American Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2020.0002","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
abstract:This essay explores tributary relationships between colonists and Algonquian peoples in seventeenth-century Virginia, placing the process of political subordination into familiar narratives of indigenous dispossession. Virginia's tributary system—a political and legal institution founded in 1646 at the conclusion of the third Anglo-Powhatan war—created a colonial order in which Indian communities became subordinated but largely autonomous polities within a composite imperial state. This idea of tribute, a form of what Hugo Grotius called an "unequal alliance," had roots in Algonquian political traditions and the emerging European literature on international law. Drawing on these lineages, this essay provides a framework for thinking about how the tributary system developed in the decades between 1646 and 1676. The legal and political distance separating tributaries from colonists proved to be an important tool for indigenous communities struggling to maintain communal identity, but provided colonists with a flexible means of effecting dispossession. Though colonists' resentment of the slender protections Governor William Berkeley afforded tributaries erupted into civil war in 1676, Bacon's Rebellion failed to destroy the tributary system. It was reestablished at the Treaty of the Middle Plantation in 1677, which still provides the legal framework for Indian relations in the state of Virginia.
本文探讨了17世纪弗吉尼亚州殖民者和阿尔冈琴人之间的朝贡关系,将政治从属的过程置于熟悉的土著被剥夺的叙述中。弗吉尼亚的朝贡体系——在1646年第三次英国-波瓦坦战争结束时建立的政治和法律制度——创造了一种殖民秩序,在这种秩序中,印第安社区在一个复合帝国国家中成为从属的,但在很大程度上是自治的政体。这种贡品的概念,一种被雨果·格劳秀斯称为“不平等联盟”的形式,植根于阿尔冈琴人的政治传统和新兴的欧洲国际法文献。根据这些血统,本文提供了一个框架来思考在1646年至1676年之间的几十年里朝贡制度是如何发展的。法律和政治上的距离将支流与殖民者分隔开来,这被证明是土著社区努力维持社区身份的重要工具,但也为殖民者提供了一种灵活的剥夺手段。尽管殖民者对总督威廉·伯克利(William Berkeley)给予支流的微薄保护的不满在1676年爆发了内战,但培根的叛乱未能摧毁这个支流体系。1677年《中部种植园条约》(Treaty of the Middle Plantation)重新确立了这一制度,该条约至今仍为弗吉尼亚州的印第安人关系提供法律框架。