Saunt has written a bold, haunting account of 'Indian removal' that, in its polished scholarship, beautiful prose, and original argument, is a worthy recipient of the Bancroft Prize. Combining brilliant synthesis, deep archival research, and powerful prose, Unworthy Republic retells the story of this epic moment as a tragic conjecture of the histories of indigenous people, antebellum slavery, and global capitalism. In May 1830, the United States launched an unprecedented campaign to expel 80,000 Native Americans from their eastern homelands to territories west of the Mississippi River. Far from being 'natural' or 'inevitable,' as contemporaries (and even some historians) have portrayed, Saunt documents the vast amount of ideological, political, and logistical work that undergirded this federal policy. Claudio Saunt received the 2021 RFK Book Award for Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory. 'Saunt’s Unworthy Republic is a brilliant, searing account of 'Indian removal' in the 1830s United States: the state-sponsored expulsion of an estimated 80,000 native peoples from their homes east of the Mississippi River and brutal deportation to an ill-defined 'Indian Territory' in the West. Justified as a humanitarian enterprise, the undertaking was to be systematic and rational, overseen by Washington’s small but growing bureaucracy. Saunt is currently Professor of American History at the University of Georgia. Virtual Talks Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic Watch on In May 1830, the United States formally launched a policy to expel Native Americans from the East to territories west of the Mississippi River. Claudio Saunt has been awarded the 2021 Bancroft Prize for his book Unworthy Republic. Claudio Saunt has written the definitive history of this widely remembered but seldom understood central episode in American history.

Unworthy republic claudio saunt