Review of The Salt Water Frontier by Andrew Lipman
Lipman’s deeply researched book, The Salt Water Frontier, primarily creates a fresh intriguing outlook on the occurrences of the colonial period during the seventeenth century as per the American history.[1] Through this book, Lipman recreates the violent European invasions in the Algonquian region, strategically located between river Hudson and the cape of Cod, through a whole new perspective.[2] Essentially, this pristine point of view aims at redirecting people’s prior familiar colonial history, which revolves around the land- based conflicts between the Europeans and native Indians. Hence, Lipman successfully pivots the known traditional scholarly colonial violence towards his ideology of how both the coastline and sea became platforms of the Indian- European cooperation and conflict. As such, this essay clearly brings out a review of Lipman’s book based on his argument, the main purpose, sources and use of the said sources.
First, Lipman’s main doctrine in this book argues on the immense significance gathered from the inter-cultural seawater encounters during the imminent colonial era of America’s seventeenth century. Therefore, via his interesting version, Lipman unearths a different geographical view of the indigenous America’s maritime contexts whereby the stated parties aliased, fought and proselytized one another on seawater just as much as they did on dry land. Similarly, Lipman used a number of credible sources in order to compile this book as gracefully and with the level of sophistication that he used.[3] Hence, amidst the extensive collection of primary sources Lipman employed in his book include written texts and maps, indigenous cultures and traditions and momentous images and drawings of both blockhouses and ships. Moreover, Lipman also pinpoints the essence of including physical objects as one of the sources he used in his book.[4] Here, he used a technique in anthropology to track down the patterns involved during the exchange of different objects such as bead shells between individuals and societies.
In essence, Lipman’s new outlook of the occurrences during the seventeenth century enables the readers to visualize the saltwater encounters between the Dutch and Europeans. Additionally, the primary sources and physicals objects, which Lipman used to base his entire book were both convincing and appropriate since they supported and clearly brought out his books’ well laid out ideas. Besides, he was also able to bring out comprehensive connections between the said sources and the book’s main agenda, which in turn relays a relatively convincing argument to his audience.
Bibliography
Lipman, Andrew. The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast. 2015, accessed January 30, 2016, <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=1088922>.
Pastore, Christopher L. “Andrew Lipman. The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast.” The American Historical Review 121, no. 4 (2016): 1234-1236.
Wadewitz, Lissa. “The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast. By Andrew Lipman.” (2016): 775-776.
[1] Pastore, Christopher L. “Andrew Lipman. The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast.” The American Historical Review 121, no. 4 (2016): 1234-1236.
[2] Christopher L. “Andrew Lipman. The Saltwater Frontier: 1234-1236
[3] Lipman, Andrew. The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast. 2015, accessed January 30, 2017,<http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=1088922>.
[4] Wadewitz, Lissa. “The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast. By Andrew Lipman.” (2016): 775-776.
