This thesis examines the massacres of the Plains Indian Wars in the United States (1851-1890) and how they relate to contemporary theories of genocide. By using the Plains Indian Wars as a case study, a critique can be made of theories which inform predictive models and genocide policy. This thesis analyzes newspaper articles, histories, congressional investigations, presidential speeches, and administrative policies surrounding the four primary massacres perpetrated by the United States during this time. An ideology of racial superiority and fears of insecurity, impurity, and insurgency drove the actions of the white settler-colonialists and their military counterparts. Still, despite the theoretical emphasis on massacre in genocide theory, massacres on the Plains were relatively rare compared to the use of other genocidal tactics. This demonstrates that contemporary genocide theorists must be careful not to unintentionally limit thinking on genocide to strict military or militia led violence.

Book Summary: World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society is an essential source of reference material on the military conflicts that have defined global history from antiquity to today. Through absorbing investigations of how the World War I peace settlement led to World War II, or insightful comparisons of U.S. past involvement in Southeast Asia with the Afghanistan War, this database encourages study and research that goes beyond isolated events to identify causal relationships, chart historical developments, and analyze the role conflict itself plays in society. Content quality is maintained by an expert advisory board, comprised of educators and historians including Dr. Spencer Tucker (the award-winning author of titles such as The Encyclopedia of Middle East Wars and American Civil War: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection).This advisory board also serves to vet the database's original journal articles, which expose researchers to scholarly argumentation on controversial topics in global military history.

Book Summary: Wars create important turning points in human history, defining our leaders and changing the lives of ordinary families and citizens. Whether fighting for independence, forging alliances, making a play for dominance, or battling a global threat, nations shape history—and the world—when they go to war. World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society presents overviews of 50 wars, rebellions, and revolutions, both those commonly taught and those less so, and provides additional analysis of causes and consequences and portraits of opponents. The effect is to elucidate the global impact of these military conflicts that have defined our world from antiquity to today such that students and researchers may develop a deeper, critical appreciation of both the history of the world and the human costs of war.

This dissertation examines why military decision makers struggle to evaluate their policies and why they often stick to unsuccessful strategies for so long. The core argument is that strategic assessment involves genuine analytic challenges which contemporary scholarship typically does not take into account. Prominent theoretical frameworks predict that the longer decision makers go without achieving their objectives, the more pessimistic they should become about their ability to do so, and the more likely they should be to change course. This dissertation challenges those ideas and explains why we should often expect the very opposite. The theoretical crux of this argument is that standard models of learning and adaptation (along with many people’s basic intuitions) revolve around the assumption that decision makers are observing repeated processes, similar to the dynamics of slot machines and roulette wheels – but in war and other contexts, decision makers often confront cumulative processes that have very different dynamics, along with a different logic for how rational actors should form and revise their expectations. Empirically, this dissertation examines U.S. decision making in Iraq, Vietnam, and the American Indian Wars. These cases demonstrate how cumulative dynamics affect strategic assessment and how understanding these dynamics can shed light on prominent theoretical frameworks, ongoing policy debates, and salient historical experience.

The Second Seminole War in Florida, 1835-1842, was a time of disruption and upheaval for all of those unfortunate enough to occupy the territory of Florida during the seven years of this protracted battle over Seminole removal to the West. Illicit trade was a major factor which enabled the Seminoles to resist removal for such an extended period. Illicit trade requires outside assistance. Documentary evidence suggests that such assistance was rendered by Spanish fishermen, English and American wreckers, slaves, free blacks, Native Americans and white American settlers. This thesis examines the evidence for plunder and illicit trade, and the possible outlets for various classes of plunder. Evidence is examined within a political economy theoretical framework. An archaeological research design is also developed to aid in identifying and recognizing war camps and war caches in the archaeological record.

This study examines in depth the most common interpretation of the opening of the Third Seminole War (1855-1858). The interpretation in question was authored almost thirty years after the beginning of the war, and it alleges that the destruction of a Seminole banana plant garden by United States soldiers was the direct cause of the conflict. This study analyzes the available primary records as well as traces the entire historiography of the Third Seminole War in order to ascertain how and why the banana garden account has had such an impactful and long-lasting effect. Based on available evidence, it is clear that the lack of fully contextualized primary records, combined with the failure of historians to deviate from or challenge previous scholarship, has led to a persistent reliance on the banana garden interpretation that continues to the present. Despite the highly questionable and problematic nature of this account, it has dominated the historiography on the topic and is found is almost every written source that addresses the beginning of the Third Seminole War. This thesis refutes the validity of the banana garden interpretation, and in addition, provides alternative explanations for the Florida Seminoles' decision to wage war against the United States during the 1850s.