The Comanche Empire

“An exhaustively researched and strikingly new interpretation of the nomadic group that dominated the Southwest from about 1750 to 1850.”—Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times

“Hämäläinen succeeds in introducing a new perspective on Southwestern history, mastering Spanish and Mexican historic resources to tell of a horse- and bison-based Comanche empire, Comanchería. . . . Enthusiastically recommended for academic and public libraries.”—Library Journal

Winner of the 2010 John C. Ewers Book Award given by the Western History Association

Winner of the 2009 Award of Merit, sponsored by the Philosophical Society of Texas

Co-Silver medal winner of the 2009 Independent Publisher Book Award in the category of History

Received Honorable Mention for the 2008 PROSE Award in the U.S. History and Biography/Autobiography category, sponsored by the Association of American Publishers

Gold medal winner of the 2008 Book of the Year Award in the category of History, presented by ForeWord magazine

“The Comanche Empire is a landmark study that will make readers see the history of southwestern America in an entirely new way.”—David J. Weber, author of Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment

“This exhilarating book is not just a pleasure to read; important and challenging ideas circulate through it and compel attention. It is a nuanced account of the complex social, cultural, and biological interactions that the acquisition of the horse unleashed in North America, and a brilliant analysis of a Comanche social formation that dominated the Southern Plains. Parts of the book will be controversial, but the book as a whole is a tour de force.”—Richard White, author of The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815

“The Comanche Empire is an impressive achievement. That a major Native power emerged and dominated the interior of the continent compels a rethinking of well-worn narratives about colonial America and westward expansion, about the relative power of European and Native societies, and about the directions of change. The book makes a major contribution to Native American history and challenges our understanding of the ways in which American history unfolded.”—Colin G. Calloway, author of One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark

“Hämäläinen not only puts Native Americans back into the story but also gives them—particularly the Comanche—recognition as major historical players who shaped events and outcomes.”—Sherry Smith, Southern Methodist University, author of Reimagining Indians: Native Americans Through Anglo Eyes, 1880–1940

“Pekka Hämäläinen profoundly alters our understanding of the American Southwest, asserting that Comanche expansion and domination eclipsed European imperialism over the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Readers of this ambitious and discerning ethnohistory learn close-up how the Comanches made colonial as well as native communities the building blocks of their own ascendancy. In a counter-narrative to frontier history and a revision of borderlands study, Hämäläinen features the contingency of historical change and the agency of Indian people.”—Daniel H. Usner, Vanderbilt University