EMINENT DOMAIN: The Louisiana Purchase and the Making of America

by John Keats ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 4, 1973

A light inversion of conventional wisdom about the Founding Fathers' diplomatic sagacity and their nation-building. Keats argues that American history was merely a reflex extension of European politics until the Louisiana Purchase put the U.S. on the map. There is some truth to the idea but Keats gives it little extension or force, pursuing the thesis at the episodic level. Delighting in minor ironies, he describes the Spanish, French and British expeditions, and goes on to epater Americans -- characterizing the leadership of the War of Independence as ""violent men who provoked a long-suffering British government into taking police action to protect itself""; the colonials were ""rabble"" and ""90% of the rebels' arms were made in France""(?). Jefferson was a self-indulgent Francophile and the Revolution was consummated through European diplomatic deals. This is the kind of stuff on which smart-aleck academics make their reputation -- but Keats' climactic account of the Louisiana Purchase is convincing, noting that Napoleon decided to sell land he did not possess, whose boundaries were unknown to the U.S. which would borrow the purchase money from a nation (England) upon whom Napoleon was about to make war. Pleasurable here, dubious there, mildly provocative everywhere.

Pub Date: June 4, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Charterhouse--dist. by McKay

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION