This book explores the evolution of Americans' first way of war, to show how war waged against Indian noncombatant population and agricultural resources became the method early Americans employed and, ultimately, defined their military heritage. The sanguinary story of the American conquest of the Indian peoples east of the Mississippi River helps demonstrate how early Americans embraced warfare shaped by extravagant violence and focused on conquest. Grenier provides a major revision in understanding the place of warfare directed on noncombatants in the American military tradition, and his conclusions are relevant to understand US 'special operations' in the War on Terror.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The First Way of War's origins in Colonial America; 2. The First Way of War in the North American wars of King George II, 1739-1755; 3. Continental and British Petite Guerre, circa 1750; 4. The First Way of War in the Seven Years' War, 1754-1763; 5. The First Way of War in the era of the American Revolution; 6. The First Way of War in the 1790s; 7. The First Way of War and the final conquest of the transappalachian West.

Author Biography

John Grenier is Associate Professor of History at the United States Air Force Academy.