Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Informed Power
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1983
WEBSITE:
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http://history.ucr.edu/People/Faculty/Dubcovsky/index.html * https://earlyamericanists.com/2016/06/08/qa-with-alejandra-dubcovsky/ * http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/04/26_medal.shtml
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | no2015106263 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2015106263 |
| HEADING: | Dubcovsky, Alejandra, 1983- |
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| 370 | __ |a Buenos Aires (Argentina) |2 naf |
| 670 | __ |a Dubcovsky, Alejandra. Informed power, 2016: |b title page (Alejandra Dubcovsky) CIP application (Dubcovsky is a US citizen, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on July 17, 1983) |
PERSONAL
Born 1983, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
EDUCATION:University of California, Berkeley, B.A., Ph.D. San Jose State, M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. University of California, Riverside, assistant professor of history. Worked formerly as an assistant professor of history at Yale University.
AWARDS:University Medal, University of California, Berkeley, 2005. Haas Scholar and McNair Scholar, University of California, Berkeley, 2003-2005.
WRITINGS
Contributor to numerous periodicals, including Ethnohistory, William and Mary Quarterly, Early American Studies, Common-Place, and Native South.
SIDELIGHTS
Alejandra Dubcovsky is a writer and professor of history. She was born 1983 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she grew up. She attended college at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her bachelor’s degree and her Ph.D. She also has a master’s degree in library and information sciences from San Jose State.
During her last two years at UC Berkeley, Dubcovsky was a Haas Scholar and a McNair Scholar. She focused this time on doing research on American slave letters. To support her research, she traveled to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and to Louisiana State University to examine unpublished letters. Dubcovsky taught history as an associate professor at Yale University before returning to California to accept a position as associate professor of history at the University of California, Riverside. Her parents are also professors, both at the University of California, Davis. Dubcovsky’s areas of teaching specialization include early America, history of a American Indians, Spanish Borderlands, history of the American South.
Dubcovsky’s first book, Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South, discusses the means by which news and knowledge were exchanged in the American South before the printing press and mail services existed.
The book is divided into three major sections, with each section examining a different aspect of communication and information exchange. Within each section, the time periods explored are divided into three historical periods: the 1560s-1670s, the 1660s-1710s, and 1710 to 1740.
The first section considers desire, digging into what sort of information or advantage each party sought to find. The first chapter explains the intricate communication system that Native communities utilized prior to and during colonization, while the second chapter explains how information, often provided in such a way to meet Native interests, from Native contacts influenced the decisions of European settlers.
The second section examines who had information, and how those individuals chose to spread or withhold this knowledge. This section considers the roles of Native communities, African slaves, English traders and colonists, and Spanish missionaries. In the third section, Dubcovsky looks at how various parties shared information. She writes about how the indigenous communities and colonists adjusted their communications means to adapt with historical events, such as war, placing particular emphasis on British actions during and following the Yamasee War of 1715 to 1717.
In examining early forms of communication in the South, Dubcovsky addresses race relations, culture, and society. As she explores these topics, she unravels certain ideas that have been taught previously in historical examinations of early Southern culture. An example of this can be found in her writings about black and white relationships, traditionally written in a simplistic way, focused on communication around slaves and slaveowners. Dubcovsky explains how race relationships were much more complicated than often described, and included exchanges between various indigenous groups, European settlers from competing nations, and imported African slaves.
John Paul Nuno in the Journal of Southern History wrote: “While other scholars have written about the historical events covered in the book, Dubcovsky seeks greater analytical meaning by utilizing a thematic approach focused on communication networks and knowledge as important gauges of power in the early South.” Dubcovsky writes from a Native-centric rather than colonization focused perspective. She describes the communications between Native tribes in the South prior to European contact, as well as the communications between Natives and Europeans. She notes the necessity of this contact, indicating that Europeans colonists would not have survived if not for their relations with Native people.
Jessica Parr on the Junto website wrote that Dubcovsky’s “diversity of sources are a big part of what makes this book stand out,” noting Dubcovsky’s ability to incorporate information about “native-dominated networks into a multi-imperial world.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Journal of Southern History, Volume 83, Number 2, 2017, John Paul Nuno, review of Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South, p. 393.
ProtoView, March, 2016, review of Informed Power.
ONLINE
David Enterprise, http://www.davisenterprise.com (April 10, 2016), Viet Tran, review of Informed Power.
Junto, https://earlyamericanists.com (June 7, 2106), Jessica Parr, review of Informed Power.
Sacramento Bee, http://www.sacbee.com (March 27, 2016), Allen Pierleoni, review of Informed Power.
Southern Space, https://southernspaces.org (August 7, 2017), Nathaniel F. Holly, review of Informed Power.
Way of Improvement, https://thewayofimprovement.com (March 14, 2016), John Fea, author interview.*
UC Berkeley history major wins University Medal
By Noel Gallagher, Media Relations | 26 April 2005
BERKELEY – Alejandra Dubcovsky has spent long hours teasing out the nuances of letters written by American slaves. That work, high grades and extracurricular activities that include helping the homeless and teaching local youngsters has landed her the 2005 University Medal, the highest honor for a graduating senior at the University of California, Berkeley.
The University Medal
Established in 1871 by California Governor Henry Huntly Haight, the University Medal honors UC Berkeley's most distinguished graduating senior. Three to five students finalists are also named.
Three previous winners have returned their medallions, then made of 14-karat gold, to Berkeley as gifts. The last to do so was Clothilde Grunksy Taylor '14, as a 90th birthday present to herself in 1981: "I received so much from the university — I had a wonderful time there — and I wanted to give a little of it back," said Taylor. Having appreciated in value 100 times, the medal was worth $4,000.
Alejandra DubcovskyThe 2005 Medalist: Alejandra Dubcovsky, scholar of slave letters, wins University Medal
The Finalists
Tanguy ChauGetting to Berkeley wasn't smooth sailing for polyglot chemistry whiz Tanguy Chau
Nate SingerMath major and former DeCal director Nate Singer leaves Berkeley a richer place
David SontagComputer science major David Sontag juggles both artifical and human intelligence
Debise GrabIn defending the Earth, Denise Grab finds a way to combine her lifelong passions
Kelly FongAnthropology major Kelly Fong reconstructs the Asian immigrant experience
As the University Medalist, Dubcovsky will speak at Commencement Convocation at the Greek Theatre on May 11 and receive a $2,500 scholarship. The medal honors a graduating senior with outstanding accomplishments and a GPA of at least 3.96.
Dubcovsky, a history major who will start work on her Ph.D. in history at UC Berkeley in the fall, said winning the medal was "overwhelming."
"I think Cal is all about you learning who you are as a person," Dubcovsky said. "You just have to go for it — you have to take the plunge."
Dubcovsky, who immigrated to Davis, Calif., from Argentina with her family when she was in the 9th grade, did just that at UC Berkeley. As soon as she arrived here, she started volunteering.
"It wasn't an option," she said. "It was, of course, something I should do."
In her first year, she started tutoring students at Emerson Elementary School in Berkeley and working with the homeless at People's Park. Over the course of her studies, Dubcovsky's jobs started to dovetail with her history major. She has had various internships and jobs at the Bancroft and Moffitt libraries; joined the Berkeley Historical Society; and helped revive Clio's Scroll, the UC Berkeley undergraduate history journal. She also teaches "Immigration and Identity" through DeCal, a program that gives UC Berkeley students the chance to initiate and facilitate their own accredited courses.
Dubcovsky's academic acumen was honed during the last two years doing research on slave letters as a Haas Scholar and as a McNair Scholar. The support from those two programs allowed Dubcovsky to travel to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and to Louisiana State University to analyze unpublished slave letters.
"Some of the things about Dubcovsky that impressed the committee were the level of engagement with her research on American slave letters, her contributions to the revitalization of Clio's Scroll, and her overall energy," wrote math professor Bjorn Poonen, chairman of the campus's Committee on Prizes.
Dubcovsky said her interest in slave letters stemmed from her junior thesis, which was based on slave narratives.
"When I finished my thesis, I felt that my questions were only beginning," she wrote in her essay to the prize committee. "Slave letters, a complicated and largely overlooked body of sources, portray slaves as both active agents of change and passive participants of bondage."
Dubcovsky said the letters reveal that the slaves, usually writing or dictating letters to be sent to absentee owners, did not represent themselves as slaves, but as individuals. Her work, which will result in another thesis, will show that the letters both created and complicated relationships between slaves and masters.
"I was so moved by these sources, these first-person accounts," Dubcovsky said. "I ventured into it knowing very little."
Even now, she said, when she gets discouraged or overwhelmed, she grabs the 194 letters that are the basis of her work and heads to Café Strada. She gets her coffee and, intentionally leaving behind paper or pencils, just reads through the letters. They remind her, she said, of why she is doing this work.
"They just speak to me. They are so powerful," she said.
Alejandra Dubcovsky
'Cal is all about you learning who you are as a person. You just have to go for it — you have to take the plunge.'
-Alejandra Dubcovsky
Dubcovsky, who has a friendly, almost carefree air about her, is quick to thank the people in her life for helping her succeed. It starts with her family — "the base of my life," she said — that includes her parents, who both teach at UC Davis; her brother, a second year student at UC San Diego; and her fiance, Ryan Joseph, who graduated from UC Berkeley last year and starts his Ph.D. in genetics at UC San Francisco in the fall. She also credits her mentor, UC Berkeley history professor David Henkin, with encouraging her to pursue the slave letters and apply for various scholarships and the University Medal.
The single best thing about her UC Berkeley experience has been the people she's met these last few years, said Dubcovsky, who eventually would like to teach or become an archivist.
"The soul of Berkeley lives and moves with its people - its faculty, students and staff," she said. "I've met the people who challenged me the most here."
She particularly remembers how intimidating her first few weeks on campus were.
"Right after my first class, I went down to Sproul, and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, all these people!'" Dubcovsky said. A few days later in her dorm, she said she and a few students realized they were all "top of the class" at their respective high schools. "Here, that just doesn't matter," she said.
"It hasn't all been fun and games at Berkeley, but I've learned from all of it," she said.
As for how she maintained a GPA high enough to qualify for the University Medal, Dubcovsky is like the supermodel who eats french fries at every meal. "I stopped caring about grades my sophomore year," she said, adding that instead of taking on a crushing workload, she made a point of taking fewer classes and putting more energy into the ones she had. And she showed up at nearly every office hour her history professors held.
"They couldn't get rid of me!" she said with a laugh.
Henkin, her mentor, praised Dubcovsky's work in a letter recommending her for the University Medal.
"Alejandra stood out almost immediately as a young woman of extraordinary academic seriousness, prodigious intellectual energy, and endless curiosity," Henkin wrote. "That she has distinguished herself in the classroom and in the community while dealing with the linguistic and cultural barriers that come with immigration is in some ways unbelievable."
Dubcovsky is modest about her many accomplishments: "I have guardian angels, I think," she said.
Q&A with Alejandra Dubcovsky
Jun
8
by Rachel Herrmann
DubcovskyToday at The Junto, we’re featuring an interview with Alejandra Dubcovsky about her new book, Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South, which Jessica Parr reviewed yesterday. Alejandra Dubcovsky is an Assistant Professor of History at Yale (and soon an Assistant Professor of history at UC Riverside). She earned her BA and PhD from UC Berkeley. She also has a Masters in Library and Information Sciences from San Jose State. She was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work has appeared in Ethnohistory, The William and Mary Quarterly, and Native South.
JUNTO: In your acknowledgements section, you describe rewriting your manuscript twice. Can you say a little bit more about where the project started, how it evolved, and why it ended up where it did?
Alejandra Dubcovsky: When I began presenting chapters from the finished dissertation, the most common response I got was: “Now that I hear you explain it, I understand what your work is about.” So I knew I was in real trouble. There was a disconnect between what I was writing and what I presenting. I realized that the story of communication and information was getting buried in layers of background and detail. I had to find a way to bring the story of communication to the forefront. First I re-wrote the book thematically, highlighting different types of informers and communication. While this thematic approach brought information to the limelight, my work lost all sense of time and change. So I re-re-wrote the book, keeping the thematic questions at play—what information circulated, who carried it, and how did these networks develop—but now structuring the stories chronologically. Using both a chronological and thematic approach, Informed Power explores how different aspects of information were privileged at different times. In the process, it reveals the intricacies and contingencies that constituted the core of both personal experiences and historical processes in the early South.
JUNTO: At various points in the book, such as in your analysis of raids by the Westos from the 1660s to the 1710s, you’ve embraced the idea of confusion. How did you realize that this is what you wanted to say, and are there time periods where analyses of confusion are particularly useful?
AD: Historians often bemoan (or celebrate, depending on your perspective on this debate) the complexity and confusion of early America. The focus on information allowed me to consider not whether I thought this time and place was confusing/complicated/nuanced, but how people at the time understood it. In the 1660s to 1710s many people, native as well as African and European, described the difficulties of navigating the increasingly volatile early South. But these difficulties and confusion did not deter them from seeking news or trying to process the latest developments. I uncovered a story that was less about consternation, and more about how people worked to make sense of their changing worlds.
JUNTO: You describe, and in some cases offer visualizations, of various networks. Although the shapes of the networks change, the size of the nodes are all equal. What drove your choice to depict nodes of uniform size?
AD: I am so glad you picked up on that! When I began this project I dreamt of doing network visualization work, but for that you need data. The limited data I did have could be interpreted in many different ways. I felt that network maps were more deceiving than useful because they only visualized (and thus codified) one of the many possibilities. So I analyzed one Franciscan Mission list from 1656 in two different ways. In other words, I visually represent the same source twice. To show how strikingly different the interpretations of the same document could be, I kept the node size the same.
JUNTO: You make a point that because Spanish is a gendered language, it allowed you, in your research, to know additional things about communicators of nuevas that you might not have known in English-language sources. Were there other ways that work in non-English sources shaped the way you used this material in the book?
AD: Non-English sources are at the heart of my book. Having a multilingual source base broadened both the breadth and the detail of my work. Reading Spanish, French, as well as some native sources (primarily Timucua) allowed me to expand the actors, chronology, geography, and perspectives of my study. I also worked through archaeological and linguistic sources. Engaging with the findings and theory of other disciplines allowed me to decenter European nodes and European forms of communication, uncovering instead information networks hidden in plain sight sustained by multiethnic, multilingual, and increasingly multiracial nodes.
JUNTO: It’s only late in the book that factions within Indian groups, as in the case of the Creeks, becomes apparent. Why is it that Indian factors don’t seem to feature in your discussion of the earlier periods of contact?
AD: Factions are always present. Just like when I say “the English” or “the Spanish” I am glossing over huge differences within these European groups, when I say “Timucua” or “Apalachicola” I am simplifying cultures and identity markers that were far more complex. Whenever possible I try to emphasize the importance of inter- and intra-Indian relations. In the seventeenth-century, for example, I am able discuss the differences within Timucua towns (and the different reactions to the Timucua Rebellion). In the sixteenth and fifteen-centuries, the sources more readily allow me to differentiate across native polities (like between Ais and Calusa, Coosa and Cofitachequi, and Etowah and Cahokia) rather than within them.
JUNTO: After reading your book, what would you most like history teachers to change about the early years of the U.S. history survey?
AD: Most basically that there was an early South! Usually when the South gets taught in the U.S. history survey it is to introduce the rise and development of African slavery in the mid-eighteenth century. There was a whole other world that existed before. Integrating this multi-imperial world dominated by native geopolitics into the U.S. history survey is about more than simply adding layers of complexity. It is about confronting assumptions of what early America looked like and who mattered (exercised power and effected change) in that world.
Alejandra Dubcovsky
Assistant Professor
Areas of specialization: early America, history of a American Indians, Spanish Borderlands, history of the American South.
(951) 827-5401
alejandra.dubcovsky@ucr.edu
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Colonial America, especially the American South and Spanish borderlands; History of Amerindians; the History of communication and information.
My first book, Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South maps the intricate, intersecting channels of information exchange in the early American South, exploring how people in the colonial world came into possession of vital knowledge in a region that lacked a regular mail system or a printing press until the 1730s.
I have published several article on these topics in Ethnohistory, The William and Mary Quarterly, Native South, Early American Studies, and Common-Place.
My current research is on the multiple fronts of Queen Anne's War (1702-1713). And I have two concurrent
Alejandra Dubcovsky
Assistant professor of Early America, Yale University
Alejandra Dubcovsky is an assistant professor of history at Yale, specializing in the study of the colonial South, American Indian history, and comparative colonial experiences. Her first book, Informing Power: Communication Exchange in the Early South is under contract at Harvard University Press. Her work has appeared in several journals, including Ethnohistory, The William and Mary Quarterly, and Native South.
Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South
ProtoView.
(Mar. 2016): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 Ringgold, Inc. http://www.protoview.com/protoview
Full Text:
9780674660182
Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South Alejandra Dubcovsky
Harvard University Press
2016
287 pages
$39.95
Hardcover
P92
This work for scholars examines how news and information was distributed in the early American South before the printing press and mail service. The book details the roles of traders, scouts, missionaries, soldiers, sailors, and even escaped slaves in spreading news from around the region. Also discussed are Native American information networks before and after European colonization. The book is divided into sections on three periods: the 1560s-1670s, the 1660s- 1710s, and the period from 1710 to 1740. This last section describes how Indians, Europeans, and Africans used networks to transmit information during armed conflicts among Indians and Europeans. B&w historical illustrations are included. ([umlaut] Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
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"Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South." ProtoView, Mar. 2016. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1& id=GALE%7CA451475302&it=r&asid=0b5390badf97d1e524ddf955d9b53f82. Accessed 21 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A451475302
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Informed Power: Communication in the
Early American South
John Paul Nuno
Journal of Southern History.
83.2 (May 2017): p393. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Full Text:
Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South. By Alejandra Dubcovsky. (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. [x], 287. $39.95, ISBN 978-0-674-66018-2.)
Similar to other works examining the early American South, Alejandra Dubcovsky's study portrays a complex and dynamic region in which even powerful sociopolitical entities sought out cross-cultural exchanges. These narratives of a fluid and diverse region challenge popular notions of southern history that privilege simplistic images of the antebellum South. Rather than being marked by stark divisions between the white and black community, the South was a contested ground between decentralized indigenous groups, competing European nations, and imported enslaved Africans. Central to each group's autonomy and respective agenda was access to trade, communication, and knowledge. While other scholars have written about the historical events covered in the book, Dubcovsky seeks greater analytical meaning by utilizing a thematic approach focused on communication networks and knowledge as important gauges of power in the early South.
Following recent trends in early American scholarship, Dubcovsky employs a Native-centric framework, which aptly encapsulates the paramount position of Native peoples vis-a-vis Europeans. From the contact period to the early nineteenth century, Native communication networks and intra- and interindigenous geopolitics largely shaped early southern history. The survival and viability of early European colonial endeavors were dependent on relations with Native peoples.
Eschewing a traditional model that traces the growing strength of colonial footholds into more powerful entities, Dubcovsky uses a thematic approach that follows a rough chronological order. The book is divided into three major parts, with each section focusing on an aspect of knowledge creation and transmission. Dubcovsky begins by examining "what" information each party sought and desired. The first chapter establishes that Native peoples had preexisting and extensive information networks that survived European contact. The next chapter highlights how early colonial competition was determined by Native information, often bestowed to further indigenous objectives. Chapter 3 exposes the limitations of Spanish colonialism in Florida due to the inability of the Spanish to fully understand the causes and spread of important events such as the Timucua Rebellion in 1656. The book's second part focuses on "who" had knowledge and
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their efforts to spread it. Consequently, the fourth chapter traces the role of Indian agents, African slaves, English traders, Spanish missionaries, and others as they sought to understand the fluid conditions at the turn of the eighteenth century and the impact of the Indian slave trade. The fifth chapter illustrates how the Apalachicola peoples (later known as Creeks) drew strength from their extensive inter-Indian relationships and refusal to ally exclusively with either the Spanish or the British. Part 3 traces "how" historical actors operated information networks. As discussed in chapter 6, these connections, especially for the British, were disrupted during the Yamasee War (1715-1717). The final chapter explores how indigenous and colonial powers adjusted their networks in the war's aftermath.
The book's framework incorporates recent historiographical arguments while providing a new perspective. The focus on information and communication allows Dubcovsky to bind the histories of the region's various peoples without being confined to physical or political boundaries and while accounting for the interplay between local and larger forces. She presents runaway slaves, indigenous figures, and European agents as major historical actors in a sophisticated information network untethered from the printing press and the Atlantic world but rather based on Native modes of communication. Dubcovsky argues that tracing these connections allows for a better understanding of how shifting power relations operated in the early South.
Dubcovsky's book excels in numerous areas. Her use of Spanish sources to shed light on Spain's relationship with the Apalachicolas (Creeks), as well as its diplomatic overtures to the Tawasa and Mobile peoples, is a welcomed addition to the field. Her use of information and communication as a central framework is largely convincing and helps explain how Native peoples played decisive roles in colonial competition, especially the 1565 Spanish-French conflict over Florida. However, in some areas, such as the expansion of the Indian slave trade, Dubcovsky's model is less informative as it traverses familiar ground. Nonetheless, Dubcovsky's greatest strength is her focus on intra- and inter-indigenous relations, which are central to the comprehension of early American history. Her work will encourage future scholarship on the early South to search for innovative frameworks that extract greater analytical meaning from the region's rich archival sources.
John Paul Nuno
California State University, Northridge Nuno, John Paul
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Nuno, John Paul. "Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South." Journal of
Southern History, vol. 83, no. 2, 2017, p. 393+. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps /i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA495476207&it=r& asid=494d9a1bd1fff3d25353a1e1916fe5d2. Accessed 21 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495476207
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The Author’s Corner with Alejandra Dubcovsky
March 14, 2016 / ab1519
Informed PowerAlejandra Dubcovsky is Assistant Professor of History at Yale University. This interview is based on her new book, Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South (Harvard University Press, 2016).
JF: What led you to write Informed Power?
AD: I was writing a graduate student paper on the Stono Rebellion, the largest slave rebellion in colonial North America. I kept thinking: “how do the slaves in South Carolina know that if they reach Spanish Florida they will be freed?” Answering that seemingly straightforward question evolved into a dissertation and then into a book-length project that explored what information moved in the colonial world, who was responsible for spreading news, and how those processes unfolded. As I mapped the intricate and intersecting channels of information exchange, I realized that most of the nodes in these networks were made and maintained by native peoples. Furthermore, the ties that bound these networks together depended on non-epistolary and unofficial forms of communication. I had uncovered communication networks neither centered on European hubs nor dependent on written modes of communication. These multiethnic and multilingual channels of communication (and the relations they afforded) were actually instrumental for disseminating news and ideas in the American South, a region that lacked a regular mail system and operated until the 1730s without a printing press.
JF: In 2 sentences, what is the argument of Informed Power?
AD: Informed Power argues that communication networks were crucial to the creation, development, and growth of colonial spaces and the conflicts that emerged within them. Indian, European, and African modes of communication, which are quite often unobserved and unremarked upon, help uncover everyday articulations of power that gave shape to the early South.
JF: Why do we need to read Informed Power?
AD: The study of communication networks provides a new approach to early American history. It shows the links among peoples who shared no consensus of the physical or political boundaries of their worlds without losing sight of the differences and inequalities among them. Examined alongside each other, Indian, European, and African networks generate a story about communication in which the main takeaway is neither the lack of information that plagued the colonial world nor the technological advances that, as time went on, supposedly facilitated the circulation of news. These communication networks show the uneven, varied, and interconnected relations that not only bound the early South but also informed power.
JF: When and why did you decide to become an American historian?
AD: I was a freshman at UC Berkeley and Robin Einhorn was my first professor; she taught history with such passion, power, and clarity that I was enthralled from day one. I did not grow up in the United States, so I was hearing the story of early America for the first time. American history was confusing, paradoxical, and fantastic in every possible way. I also found the whole process of doing history compelling: the archive, the sources, as well as the interpretative and analytical work. But for all my curiosity and drive, I would not be an American historian without programs like the McNair and Haas Scholars Program or the support of my teachers and mentors.
JF: What is your next project?
AD: My next project is on the multiple fronts of Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713). And I have two concurrent collaborative projects. The first is an interdisciplinary study of the role of translation and literacy in the colonial world. And the second is also an interdisciplinary study that uses and interrogates anthropology and archeology to study the American South.
JF: Thanks, Alejandra. Great stuff!
Review: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South
Jun
7
by Jessica Parr
Alejandra Dubcovsky, Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016).
61VAwsW64fL._SL500_Alejandra Dubcovsky’s Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South is an ambitious book. She analyzes how information was communicated throughout the early South, a region that was without a regular mail system or print culture prior to 1730. The “early South,” as Dubcovsky acknowledges, is an “ambiguous” term (3). Her “early South” includes much of the lands from the Jamestown settlement south, and from the Mississippi River east. The result is a vibrant blend of Native American peoples, Africans, and European interactions that both complicate and enrich her analysis. Her sources include not only English, French, and Spanish, but also a number of Native American sources, including Timucua. She draws not only on written sources, but linguistic and archaeological evidence as well. This interdisciplinary approach allowed for broader inclusion of non-European networks than appears in many studies. Networks, as Dubcovsky defines them, are a “pattern of ties connecting discrete places or peoples”(4) She discusses a number of different types of networks—economic, political, religious, diplomatic, subaltern—but depicts all nodes as uniform in size. While some might take issue with this approach, the uniformness of the nodes makes sense, given the book’s goal of decentralizing European power structures, and does not detract.
Dubcovsky is interested in how the exchange of information across these different colonial spaces helped to spread news and ideas. The book is divided into three parts. Part I: “What: Making Sense of La Florida, 1560s-1670s,” describes what sort of information people wanted. It explores the development of Native American networks before and after European colonization, and how information circulated. It also discusses the emergence of La Florida, with the arrival of the Spanish, as a colonial space at the center of competitive imperial rivalries and colonial developments. To Dubcovsky, the goal of determining what information the participants (European, African, and Native Americans) wanted allows us to see what mattered (and what that changes) in the early South (6-7, 11-98). Part II, “Who: The Many Faces of Information, 1660s-1710s,” is focused more on the participants themselves—who acquired and carried news across networks. This focus on who disseminated information is crucial to Dubcovsky’s discussion of the regional entropy, as well as the interdependence of Native Americans and Europeans (7, 99-158). Part III, “How: New Ways of Articulating Power, 1710-1740,” traces how Indians, Europeans, and Africans moved information, with particular attention (using the Yamasee War) to the ways war rendered existing strategies for sharing information inadequate. The result was the creation of new parameters and priorities (7-8, 159-210). Dubcovsky does not get into why people disseminate information, because the motivation is self-evident: power and control (8).
The channels of communication described in these three parts, she argues, could “transcend cultural, political, and linguistic divides,” and were an essential part of not only European, but also Native American geopolitics (4).[1] More than just establishing connections, Dubcovsky argues, these channels helped to establish values, priorities, and hierarchies. For example, in one evaluation of Florida, she uses a list of Timucua caciques (leaders) who attended the 1657 general assembly in San Pedro to assess Governor Diego Robolledo’s desires for networking Spanish Florida. This Robolledo-centric version of Florida’s network places the Governor directly in the center, with the Timucua caciques on the periphery. In another figure, Dubcovsky reorders the same list to privilege inter-Timucua relations. The Timucua-centric table is far more complex than its Robolledo-centric cousin; it has no clear center, and incorporates more nodes and more connections. The point was to demonstrate how different participants in networks could re-envision the networks by reordering information and account for a rapidly changing world (3). It also serves as an interesting model of how historians working on networks might produce multiple meaningful interpretations from the same limited data.
Among Dubcovsky’s key contributions are both her discussion of intersections across empires (including Native American ones), and also her consideration of communications that occur outside of urban centers and European power structures. There have been some very good studies in recent years that take into account how the exchange of information helped to create spaces (83, 94). There has also been some important recent scholarship on networks.[2] The range and complexity of networks Dubcovsky discusses, and also her diversity of sources are a big part of what makes this book stand out. She also does a fine job of integrating native-dominated networks into a multi-imperial world.
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[1] See, for example, Susannah Shaw Romney, New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014); Lindsay O’Neill, The Opened Letter: Networking in the Early Modern British World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). I reviewed O’Neill’s book last fall.
[2] Notably, Robert Paulette, An Empire of Small Spaces: Mapping the Southeastern Anglo-Indian Trade, 1732-1795 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012); Christian Ayne Crouch, Nobility Lost: French and Canadian Martial Cultures, Indians, and the End of New France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014); Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); and Heather Miyano Kopelson, Faithful Bodies: Performing Religion and Race in the Puritan Atlantic (New York: New York University Press, 2014).
DHS grad releases first book, examining colonial communication
By Viet Tran From page A1 | April 10, 2016
The common perspective of colonial America includes the arrival of the British, the rise of slave plantations and the removal of most Native Americans.
However, Yale professor Alejandra Dubcovsky’s first book, “Informed Power: Communication in the Early South,” recognizes more to the story. Released on April 4, her work attempts to expand this narrow look beyond the common British colonial perspective to recognize the important interaction with other players in the story.
Author and scholar Alejandra Dubcovsky is a Davis High School graduate. Courtesy photo
Author and scholar Alejandra Dubcovsky is a Davis High School graduate. Courtesy photo
Dubcovsky is a graduate of Davis High School.
“I was really interesting in making the story of early America more diverse and more inclusive,” she said, “not just because of politics, but because of what I was finding on the ground. … Sure, there were English people, but they were minorities among many others, so I thought, how could I tell a story that reflects what I’m finding in my sources?”
Peter C. Mancall, a professor of history at the University of Southern California, calls the book “a groundbreaking work.”
Focusing on the colonial American South from 1500 to the 1740s, the book examines how people communicated in a time when there was no printing press and no official postal system, when Native Americans were a diverse majority on the continent.
In the process, it shows how the Europeans from empires as diverse as Britain, Spain and France all relied on indigenous paths and networks already in play to obtain information, communicate and navigate the new world. These largely oral networks of indigenous people include diplomats, Spanish missionaries, traders and translators, among others.
“What I’m trying to show in my work (is) this centrality of not just Anglo, British, Spanish note, but a native note,” Dubcovsky said. “Really, it shows the importance of native people in the construction of the American South, a story that we think of as black and white with rise of American slavery, but there are centuries of stories before that.”
A multilingual project, Dubcovsky conducted her research by traveling to Florida, Georgia and South Carolina to read through archives of primary sources, a process she said required “learning how to read these instructions left by the past.”
“It takes a lot of perseverance and a lot of reading through bad handwriting,” she joked.
The sources ranged from Spanish mission records in Florida to trade records by merchants in South Carolina, each providing a different side of the story.
Dubcovsky’s ability to read documents in not just English, but Spanish and French as well, allowed her access to multiple perspective beyond the British to include native people and other Europeans.
Dubcovsky structures the book around three simple questions: what type of information circulated, who was helping to move it, and how those processes unfolded. Connecting the three questions is the constant underlying motive at play: power.
“It’s people wanting to exert control over others’ ability to regulate movement, to control space, to control resources, to influence others’ behaviors, perceptions, to resist change,” Dubcovsky said. “That’s why people do things.”
The methods by which the early Americans maintained power depended on multiple factors. Translators could influence information exchange; sometimes information was purposely withheld. Geopolitical factors also played a role: connection with individuals of a territory affords them information and power.
“One of my favorite examples comes from a group of Ais Indians,” Dubcovsky said. “They come before the Spanish governor in St. Augustine, Florida … with news, saying, ‘We hear there’s war in Europe and we’re here to protect you.’
“And the reason they know is because these Indians are on the coast of Florida, they’ve been watching ships and they’ve learned a pattern: When there’s a lot of ships, when there’s less ships, what could it mean. So it’s an amazing moment where Europeans are learning about war in Europe through Native Americans.
“So I’m coming to moments like that and figuring out, how does anyone know anything, but also this centrality of non-European actors in the construction of colonial knowledge and imperial knowledge.”
Although the Americans continued to use the native networks through the American Revolution and beyond, Dubcovsky ends her historical narrative circa 1740s, due to the significant rise of slavery plantations in the South, which changed the nature of the social dynamics in who moved and how.
Nevertheless, Dubcovsky’s story may well continue to the present, for the way in which information was exchanged and interpreted within the Colonial South has startling relevance to today’s age of the dealing with information overload through the internet, which influenced her work.
“Clearly, this is a book on information in 2016,” she said. “Clearly, I’m influenced by Twitter, Facebook and the present-day thinking about just being inundated with news and how to deal with it — all the current reality of present-day news.
“That being said, … one of the things that my work shows is the fact that people have always lived in an age of information, that they have always had information problems, and they always had to come up with solutions to their information problems…
“There’s no such thing as a perfect source of unbiased news. People are always having to reckon with that. And how they do that, it’s different over time. … It’s a challenge now as it was a challenge in the past.”
Dubcovsky was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She attended high school in Davis, where she was a student of ESL teacher Verena Borton, the first person she thanked in the book’s acknowledgements.
"A Very Old Problem": Uncovering Networks of (Mis)Communication in Early America
Nathaniel F. Holly
College of William and Mary
Review
Published August 7, 2017
Overview
Nathaniel F. Holly reviews Alejandra Dubcovsky's Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).
Review
The thirst for information and the power of lies is "a very old problem," writes Alejandra Dubcovsky, yet Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South is more than a lament (215). By examining networks that included colonists from Spain, France, and England as well as American Indians and enslaved Africans, she excavates an "early South" characterized by messiness, complexity, and indigenous power rather than the inexorable westward march of European domination. For Dubcovsky this early South—"the composite societies who came to inhabit the colonies of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and parts of Louisiana"—is a "socio-cultural model" that allows her to explore the historical complexities of an increasingly multiethnic space and not "some projection backward in time of what would later become the Confederacy" (4).
In addition to traditional colonial sources, Dubcovsky delves into material culture, oral traditions, linguistics, and iconography to reveal how, from the pre-Columbian era to the middle of the eighteenth century, a diversity of peoples in what the Spanish called la tierra adentro—literally "the land inside"—communicated and mis-communicated with each other. Informed Power's insufficient spatial theorization becomes most apparent where Dubcovsky vacillates between the historiographically loaded term—the “South”—and la tierra adentro. Dubcovsky devotes only a paragraph to explicating the decision to use "early South" to designate a "region" where this term had little contemporary meaning.
Map identifying Spanish treasure fleets, ca. 1720. Map by Emanuel Bowen. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, loc.gov/resource/g4390.ct002233.
Organized chronologically and thematically, Informed Power begins in a North America without Europeans and ends just as the English solidify their hold in Carolina and Georgia. Dubcovsky, an assistant professor of history at the University of California–Riverside, divides the book into three parts. The first—"What"—concerns the sort of information European settlers most desired: gold. Upon hearing from an Indian that a captured Spaniard named Juan Ortiz was nearby, Juan de Añasco "stopped listening and began celebrating certain that he had found oro (gold)" (31). Even when Europeans received useful information, "they did not know how to evaluate it properly," and evidently misunderstood it as relevant to the discovery of mineral wealth (32).
In "Who," Dubcovsky outlines who "acquired and spread" information as a way to come to terms with this volatile and disorderly geography (7). As a means to maximize his personal power and the safety of his Florida town, Apalachicole, an Indian named Pentocolo, for example, operated simultaneously as a "Spanish ally and an English sympathizer" (143).
Overview map of the Yamasee War, June 29, 2007. Map by Pfly. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 3.0.
And in the final section—"How"—Dubcovsky examines the Yamasee War to articulate how communication networks operated (and didn't). As the war progressed, the Spanish began "investing in particular Indians" because they began to treat "information as a commodity that could be purchased" (201). What, though, about "why"? "This absence is deliberate," writes Dubcovsky, "because the answer is clear: power." The entire book offers an answer to why. Although the connection between information and power might seem relatively facile, Informed Power reveals it to be "anything but simple and obvious" (8).
Three examples of Mississippian culture avian themed repoussé copper plates, April 20, 2012. Image by Herb Roe. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 3.0.
Dubcovsky begins her analysis in a place characterized by the colonizing power of Cahokia, a pre-Columbian urban center and chiefdom at the confluences of the Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri Rivers (3). As she demonstrates in discussing the Commerce Map—a rock drawing (located about 150 miles south of present-day St. Louis) that is the oldest known cartographic representation in eastern North America—communication networks connected a wide geography well before Europeans arrived. The territory, however, looked dramatically different from that encountered by Europeans. Rather than power being diffuse, communication networks were centered at Cahokia (represented by a large falcon glyph). By dissecting the relationship between communication and power in a North America without Europeans, Dubcovsky demonstrates that exchange and control of information was central to the way American Indians organized their worlds. While much would change with the arrival of Europeans, the foundations for early colonial relations were established earlier. Rather than looking forward to an antebellum, plantation South, Dubcovsky persistently qualifies and enhances her arguments about indigenous power by gesturing towards the pre-Columbian past.
Top: De Soto and Vitachuco, 1898. Image by George Gibbs. Originally published in Grace King's De Soto and his Men in the Land of Florida (The Macmilliam Company, 1898). Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, loc.gov/resource/cph.3c04322/.
Bottom: Timucua men meeting settlers, ca. 1562. Lithograph. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Image is in the public domain.
Informed Power's early chapters reveal the power held by Indians in cross-cultural communication. Once Cahokia collapsed—before European arrival—a new social geography emerged, still defined by chiefdoms, but where power was more diffuse and communication primarily oral. In this space, as distinct from urban centers such as Cahokia, trails were of the utmost importance, and for much of the colonial period Indians controlled them. "These paths," writes Dubcovsky, "bound distant Indian nations together, even as they pitted them against each other" (21). When de Soto traveled in the mid-sixteenth century, he was at the mercy of Indians. And once the Spanish, French, and eventually English established permanent settlements, they relied on Indians to glean information about the strategies of their European rivals. No matter what sort of grand plan imperial officials hatched across the Atlantic, the constraints imposed by Indian power mattered more. The malleability of information is especially clear in Dubcovsky's treatment of the 1656 Timucua Rebellion. La Florida's governor, Franciscan missionaries, and Timicua Indians each worked to channel the flow of information and shape it to their particular narrative. The governor blamed the Franciscans for causing unrest. The Franciscans gestured towards the abusive policies of the colonial government. And the Timicuas highlighted their dissatisfaction with "having to serve as cargadores," carrying food and supplies across La Florida for the Spanish. Using two visual representations of information networks to augment her analysis (83, 94), Dubcovsky argues that "The different versions of the uprising expose the multiple ways that information was gathered, interpreted, and networked in the early South" (96).
In most instances of cross-cultural communication, the who mattered just as much (if not more) than the what. By examining a large cast of historical actors, Dubcovsky illuminates the motivations of those establishing and disrupting connections. In a geography shattered by disease, slavery, and violence, varying motivations colored information exchange. It obscures complexity to talk only about the Spanish or the English or Indians—or even Yamasees or Timucuas or Cherokees. Individual motivations are not easily mapped onto an entire people. Pamini, for example, was a female Yspo leader who lived near Santa Catalina in the early 1670s. We know very little about the Yspo—they were probably a group of Muskogean-speaking refugees who had coalesced as a way to deal with slave raids. After a meeting with the Spanish captain Argüelles near Port Royal, in which Pamini provided him with news that the English in Charles Town were relatively weak—contradicting the information of other Indian informants, Argüelles began to trust her.
Over the next three years Pamini told the Spanish much about the English. She also told the English much about the Spanish. Whether true or not, Pamini's information provided a means to an end: she able to secure trade with the Spanish and English while protecting her people from enslavement. "News was a powerful weapon," Dubcovsky concludes, "it was both the sword Pamini used to defend her authority and the shield she wielded to protect her town" (109). Sowing confusion was integral to Pamini's power. By identifying who transmitted information and mis-information, Dubcovsky provides a schematic of layered, messy, and constantly shifting networks.
Catawba deerskin map of the nations of Native Americans to the Northwest of South Carolina following the Yamasee War, ca. 1724. Map by Francis Nicholson. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, loc.gov/resource/g3860.ct000734/.
Information connecting the peoples of this this colonial landscape also pushed them apart—most apparently when the tenuous networks broke down. As the Yamasee War exposed factions, the English could no longer rely on their old networks. Working to refashion their information-gathering, they began to "dictate, not negotiate, the terms of exchange" (191). The Spanish were also forced to adapt to a changing social geography. As the Yamasee War progressed they began to privilege information from select Indian leaders, not from just anyone who would talk to them. What emerged were "bitter, competing," and "coexisting articulations of power" (214).
While Dubcovsky does an excellent job of weaving disparate strands of evidence in Spanish, English, French, and indigenous language sources into a larger tapestry characterized by the irony of communication, she leaves a number of loose ends. Mentioning the power of rumors and the struggle colonial actors had identifying them, she doesn't examine this expressive form nor cite Gregory Evans Dowd's Groundless, a study of rumor in early America. Lies receive similar short shrift, without mention of Joshua Piker's The Four Deaths of Acorn Whistler.
Informed Power's blurring of distinctions between "space" and "place" sometimes obscures the book's arguments. Writing that the "early South's" communication networks connected "discrete places" and that these networks were crucial to the "creation, development, and growth of colonial spaces,'" Dubcovsky doesn't examine how local places (and abstract spaces) would mean something different to indigeneous groups than to colonizing powers (4). Citing Keith Basso's Wisdom Sits in Places—a favorite among historians of American Indians—she agrees that "Indian place names offer perhaps the most enduring clue to how Indians conceived their world" (45). Yet, without citing an example, Dubcovsky concludes that the "Indian place names of La Florida show an ethnocentrism that was supported not by isolation but rather was fostered by a deep awareness of others" (45).
Informed Power is, however, a remarkable achievement. Not only does Dubcovsky illuminate the significance of communication networks to the emergence of an early South, she does so in a way that highlights indigenous power where it is often ignored—powerful Indians were not only denizens of the American West.
About the Author
Nathaniel Holly is a PhD student at the College of William and Mary. His research interests focus on the intersections of urban, colonial, and indigenous histories in the early American southeast. His recent work includes book reviews in Historical Geography, Chronicles of Oklahoma, the South Carolina Historical Magazine, and H-Net, as well as articles, such as "'Living Memorials to the Past': The Preservation of Nikwasi and the 'Disappearance' of North Carolina's Cherokees," in the North Carolina Historical Review (July 2015) and "Transatlantic Indians in the Early Modern Era," in History Compass (Oct. 2016).
Author, ex-Davis resident, explains how they ‘texted’ in the early South
By Allen Pierleoni
apierleoni@sacbee.com
My feed
March 27, 2016 7:00 AM
Alejandra Dubcovsky took a difficult road to reach authorhood. The former Davis resident and UC Berkeley grad is now a professor at Yale University, where she teaches early American history.
Her sociology-centric “Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South” is a fascinating study (and lesson for the digital age) of how the European and African denizens of the region set up an oral “information highway” in the 17th and early 18th centuries to literally find some context in their new world and by gathering vital news (Harvard University Press, $40, 304 pages; on sale April 4).
Remember, there were no printing presses or mail system in that time. The network involved “scouts, traders, missionaries, hunting parties, Indians, shipwrecked sailors, captured soldiers and fugitive slaves.” Their network helped found the oral tradition that is a hallmark of the South to this day.