History
Lori Daggar posing outside in front of a stone wall
Lori J. Daggar
Assistant Professor of History
Lori Daggar specializes in early North American history. Her research locates and follows connections between diverse peoples, locales, and ideas, and this approach enables her to link interests in empire and Indigenous histories to problems related to philanthropy, race, and the emergence of capitalism in early America.
Daggar’s first book Cultivating Empire, forthcoming with University of Pennsylvania Press, understands American empire-building as a negotiated phenomenon that was built upon the foundations of earlier Atlantic empires. It explores how Native authority and diplomatic protocols encouraged the emerging U.S. imperial state to partner with missionaries in the realm of Indian affairs, and it charts how that partnership borrowed and deviated from earlier imperial-missionary partnerships. Along the way, Cultivating Empire offers the terminology of speculative philanthropy to underscore the ways in which a desire to do good (whether heartfelt or performative) often co-existed with a desire to make profit, and it thereby links eighteenth and early nineteenth-century U.S. Indian policy—often framed as benevolent by its crafters—with the emergence of racial capitalism in the United States. It frames the contested Ohio Country as a case study, and it demonstrates that we should not understand missions and “civilizing” policies simply as tools for “assimilating the Indians.” Instead, it demonstrates that missions were hinges for economic and political development that also offered Native peoples an additional discourse and means to negotiate for power.
Degrees
B.A., Nazareth College
M.A., University of Pennsylvania
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Teaching
CIE 200: Common Intellectual Experience (first-year seminar)
HIST 125: Defining America: Early America in its Global Contexts
HIST/ENGL 212: Bears Make History (DH course)
HIST 220: Philadelphia Story: The City as Text
HIST 225: Native North America
HIST/GWSS 227: Witches, Drudges, and Good Wives: Gender, Race, and Sex in Early America
HIST322: Making American Empire
HIST 322: Revolutionary America in a Global Age of Revolution
HIST 321: Colonial America: Violence, Movement, and Exchange in the Early Atlantic World
HIST 330: Street Scrapers, Seamstresses, and the Enslaved: Work, Labor, and Capitalism in the Early Republic
HIST 421W: Native American Activism and Red Power
Professional Experience
Fellow, Bright Institute at Knox College, 2018-2020 (extended to 2021 due to COVID-19).
Advisory Council, McNeil Center for Early American Studies
Research Interests
Early North American History
American Empire
History of Capitalism
Indigenous Dispossession
Missionaries
Diplomacy
Philanthropy and Social Reform
Recent Work
Book Manuscript
Cultivating Empire: Capitalism, Philanthropy, and the Negotiation of American Imperialism in Indian Country (forthcoming with University of Pennsylvania Press)
Articles and Book Chapters:
“The White River Witch-Hunt and Indigenous Peoples’ Negotiations with Missionaries in the Era of the Early Republic,” in Benjamin Park, ed., Religion in American History (Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2021).
“‘A Damnd Rebelious Race’: The U.S. Civilization Plan and Native Authority,” in Ignacio Gallup-Diaz and Geoffrey Plank, eds., Quakers and Native Americans (Brill Press, 2019).
“The Mission Complex: Economic Development, ‘Civilization’ and Empire in the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 36, no. 3 (Fall 2016).
Book Reviews and Invited Review Essays:
“Warring for America, Warring for a Continent.” Journal of the Early Republic. Vol. 39, no. 4 (Winter 2019): 737-744.
Review of Katherine Bjork, Prairie Imperialists: The Indian Country Origins of American Empire. Western Historical Quarterly, in production.
Review of Ben-zvi, Yael. Native Land Talk: Indigenous and Arrivant Rights Theories. Early American Literature, Spring 2019.
Review of John Reda, From Furs to Farms: The Transformation of the Mississippi Valley, 1762-1825. Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Summer 2018): 352-354.
“Indigenous History and Imperial America: American Indian History Today and Tomorrow,” Reviews in American History, Vol. 45, No. 3 (September 2017): 378-383.
Review of Michael Leroy Oberg, Professional Indian: The American Odyssey of Eleazer Williams. Ethnohistory 63, no. 4 (2016).
Review of Fixico, Donald, Call for Change: The Medicine Way of American Indian History, Ethos, and Reality. H-AmIndian, H-Net Reviews. January, 2015.
Recent Invited Talks
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2020 |
Invited Conference Participant, Claiming the State: Civics, Inclusion, and Power from the American Revolution to the Civil War, mini-conference, Columbia University Seminar in Early American History and Culture and the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies, 2020. (*Postponed due to COVID-19) |
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2017 |
“‘The Best and Cheapest Way to Get Rid of Them’: Philanthropy, Economy, and the Politics of Exclusion in Indian Country,” McNeil Center for Early American Studies, The Center Seminar Series |
| 2017 | “The Society of Friends, Early U.S. Indian Policy, and the Making of American Empire,” Haverford College |
Recent Conference Presentations:
| 2018 | “Diplomacy and the Negotiation of American Empire in Indian Country,” American Society for Ethnohistory Annual Conference |
| 2018 | “Speculative Philanthropy, Indigenous Dispossession, and the Making of American Empire,” Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Annual Meeting |
| 2018 | “Philanthropy and Profit in Indian Country,” Omohundro Institute Annual Conference |
| 2018 | “‘A Damnd Rebelious Race’: Negotiating ‘Civilization’ Policies in the Ohio Country,” Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Meeting |
| 2017 | “‘Of Mercy and of Sound Policy Too’: Philanthropy and Empire in the Early Republic,” Society for Historians of the Early American Republic |
| 2017 | “‘Of Mercy and of Sound Policy Too’: Indian Removal and the Cultivation of American Empire,” Empires of Charity Workshop, University of Warwick, UK |
| 2016 | “’A damned rebelious race’: The U.S. ‘Civilization’ Plan and Native Authority,” Quakers and American Indians from the 1650s to the 21st Century, McNeil Center for Early American Studies |
| 2016 | “‘We are upon our own Business’: Hendrick Aupaumut and the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Power in the Early Republic,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting |