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Rating: 
Summary: Neither a civil nor a frontier war
Review: Although on the surface James Drake's King Philip's War is about, well, King Philip's War, it is more about New England culture in the mid seventeenth Century. I confess I didn't even remember that war from my basic early American history, but that presents no difficulty in reading, because Drake examines the politics of the colonist-Indian culture in a self-contained manner. No special background is needed.The phrase I used above, colonist-Indian culture, is important. Drake's thesis is that there was not a distinct colonial culture of transplanted Englishmen living side by side with a native Indian culture. There was actually one, not exactly the sum of the parts, but held together by a continuous interaction between the two groups. Drake's analogy is a chemical one, that of the covalent bond in molecules. I hope he does frighten away many readers with this, because it is a fairly well-chosen one. Just as two atoms may exist in proximity to each other, but remain independent, such as the English colonists and the Indians of northern New England (with whom the war was not fought), or may form an ionic bond (a much stronger one in chemistry. Think of contemporary American culture and how hard it would be to rip it apart), the covalent bond is fairly weak, and involves a sharing of resources (electrons) in which there is not a shortage. The bond can be broken with no great effort. The analogy is imperfect - the colonist-Indian culture is still mostly a combination of the two, and differences in outlook and behavior are clear to see. But it was too close an interaction to be written off as two conflicting societies. Drake points out in a scholarly but clear way that Indian groups varied in their level of interaction. Some were religious converts, the praying Indians, and lived in their own villages. And among those that did not, they varied in their level of friendship or hostility, both to the English and to each other. Many were formally made subjects of the English crown and had become adept at the application of English law. Likewise, the colonies used their Indian relations as justification of their existence in correspondence with England. This was back when the colonies disputed borders and resources with each other, so claiming the good will of the local populations was helpful. The point of all of this is that apparently older literature on the war, with which I am not familiar, treats the war as Indian versus Englishman in a frontier war. Drake's point is that it is more like a civil war. I'm not unsympathetic to that claim. Clearly Drake has researched his subject. Perhaps it is a matter more of semantics than of history, but I don't think it was really a true civil war. Most obviously, although some Indian groups fought with others, a common enough event for several wars to come, there was no fighting between colonial groups. This was part of the political education received the hard way among some of the Indians, who wondered why the other colonies did not let Philip and the Plymouth colony fight it out together. They misjudged the level of hostility among the colonies. But besides just a general interaction, there are many real aspects of a civil war that do take place and render the thesis useful, if not exact. As mentioned, many Indian tribes had pledged allegiance to the English crown and were thought of as British subjects, however incomplete the relation. In the actions and written records left by the colonial governments, they considered that they were dealing with treasonous subjects, not foreign enemies. The war was fought specifically with certain tribes in the immediate region. More northern Indians, whom the colonies also fought shortly thereafter, were not considered treasonous, just hostile, and contemporaries never considered their fights part of the same conflict. In the end, the covalent bond was broken. Indian relations would never be the same again. The war, which seemed tiny by today's standards (only a couple thousand dead, maximum, on both sides), as a fraction of population was huge (think millions with today's population). But the war is never really the point of this work. It is the nature of that society and its means of eventual conclusion that is the point of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Thesis, Bad Writing
Review: Historian James Drake presents an intriguing thesis in this book. In his view, King Philip's War was a civil war that tore apart a highly integrated European-Indian society. On the face of it, this idea seems ludicrous, but Drake presents a very convincing case. Even if Drake does not win you over, you learn a lot about both colonial and Indian societies. Even the most ardent critics of the work must admit that Drakes presents some significant challenges to conventional thinking. The problem is that Drake does not know how to write well. The book is dreadfully slow and dry, with little penchent for anything but the most academic trivia. If one stays awake, you will find some very fascinating insights mixed together with the horrendously slow treatise, but often, it's not worth it. For fans of colonial history, it's a must. For anyone else, be warned: it will be a tough read.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Thesis, Bad Writing
Review: Historian James Drake presents an intriguing thesis in this book. In his view, King Philip's War was a civil war that tore apart a highly integrated European-Indian society. On the face of it, this idea seems ludicrous, but Drake presents a very convincing case. Even if Drake does not win you over, you learn a lot about both colonial and Indian societies. Even the most ardent critics of the work must admit that Drakes presents some significant challenges to conventional thinking. The problem is that Drake does not know how to write well. The book is dreadfully slow and dry, with little penchent for anything but the most academic trivia. If one stays awake, you will find some very fascinating insights mixed together with the horrendously slow treatise, but often, it's not worth it. For fans of colonial history, it's a must. For anyone else, be warned: it will be a tough read.
Rating: 
Summary: Academia at its dull, pendantic, worst
Review: I got interested in this period of history after reading Parkman's masterful "France and England" series. Drake's book is the opposite -- dull, politically correct, completely lacking a sense of drama, written more with a view to securing tenure than increasing knowledge of this period. There's all the buzzwords -- indentity and gender and sexual politics, hints of Foucault and Derrida... an absolute waste of money. I pity his students. I pity the study of history. Morrison, Parkman, Freeman, Foote -- where are you when we need you?
Rating:
Summary: Well-Written, Well-Argued and Balanced Treatment
Review: James D. Drake's "King Philip's War" offers a tight, well-argued thesis that the King Philip War should be viewed more as a civil insurrection than a "settler-versus-Indian" conflict. It is not a chronological account of the war but rather a well-researched interpretation. For a detailed account of the war's events, the reader should see Douglas Leach's "Flintlock and Tomahawk" or Jill Lepore's "The Name of War." Indeed, for a full appreciation of Drake's arguments it is probably a good idea to have read beforehand one or the other of these excellent accounts. Drake examines the tensions among the various groups that figured in the war -- the bickering among the English colonies, the divided loyalties of the so-called praying Indians, the complex relationships among the Wampanoags, Narragansetts and other Algonquian tribes -- and argues that the war can best be explained as a conflict within single a society rather than a racial conflict between the Puritans and the natives. He frequently resorts to the molecular analogy of covalent bonding to explain how different groups can contribute to a definable whole (the molecule) while remaining in some fashion distinct (the atoms). Drake's work invites comparison with Russell Bourne's "The Red King's Rebellion," also an interpretive piece. Bourne examines how an amicable relationship between the Puritans and the Algonquians dating from the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620 degenerated into an ugly armed conflict in the 1670s. While both Bourne and Drake take pains to examine the war from the perspectives of both the colonists and the Algonquians, Drake seems a little less prone to condemn the Puritans and more willing to view their treatment of the natives in the context of contemporary European attitudes toward war and rebellion. "King Philip's War," a well-written, well-argued and balanced treatment of a complex subject, is both good scholarship and good reading.
Rating:
Summary: An Important Contribution
Review: This is a clearly written and thoughtful analysis of King Philip's War. While some may disagree with the author's characterization of the conflict as a "civil war," Drake effectively illuminates the important and complex connections that developed among the New England colonies and some Native American nations and how those connections helped to bring about the war.
Rating:
Summary: An Important Contribution
Review: This is a clearly written and thoughtful analysis of King Philip's War. While some may disagree with the author's characterization of the conflict as a "civil war," Drake effectively illuminates the important and complex connections that developed among the New England colonies and some Native American nations and how those connections helped to bring about the war.
Rating: 
Summary: Academically self-fulling point of view
Review: This is a well researched, academic book that has a fundamental flaw: the underlying thesis, that King Philip's War was a civil war, is preposterous. The differences between native and English societies on the eve of the war were profound--Philip says as much to John Easton a week before the war. The fact that the English attempt to control the war through a series of treaties also speaks to the two, separate societies. Ask Russell Peters of the Wampanoag, or Ella Sekataw of the Narragansett, what they think of the civil war thesis. Drake writes well, but this essay was clearly composed to meet the demands of a thesis committee, not common sense. Also, as with Lepore's book, you need to read a history of King Philip's War before you can begin to understand what Drake is trying to say. To do that, start with Ellis, Leach or Schultz/Tougias.
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