The Comanche Empire: Scholarly Review

Scholarly reviews provide a reader with an analytical insight to an author’s analysis of a subject. In The Comanche Empire, Pekka Hamalainen creates a thesis, which claims the Comanche Native Americans created a powerful empire in the Southwest. Assessing Hamalainen’s thesis, reviewers Joel Minor, Dan Flores, Gerald Betty, and Joaqin Rivaya-Martinez presents a variety of views of the monograph. Providing the strengths and weakness of Hamalainen’s monograph, the reviewers can identify the reviewer’s points of agreement and disagreement. Each reviewer offers a personal approach to the monograph. Each scholarly review proposes a structured assessment, which provides the reader with an individual perspective of the monograph under consideration.

Summarizing The Comanche Empire, the authors provide their opinions to engage the reviewing of the monograph. Reviewer for the Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Dan Flores writes an academic review of the text. Flores argues that the book’s use of Comanche economic and geopolitical factors reshapes the reader’s traditional view of Native Americans. Addressing the economic and geopolitical factors, the questions the average reader’s knowledge of the history of the Comanche tribe. Flores follows his question by expressing the opinion that the text’s strong point is its research and knowledge on Comanche history. Unlike Flores’ academic approach, Joel Minor engages Hamalainen’s text by structuring his review to the casual reader of history. Minor raises several questions regarding the author’s use of empire. Minor states that the author’s use of empire to describe the Comanche presents a new concept of history, which attributes the shortcomings of colonial powers to the strength of the Native

Taking a historical approach in the review, Martinez uses his knowledge of the Comanche to focus on the arguments of the text. While praising Hamalainen’s research, Martinez critically analyzes the text’s sources. Concluding the monograph’s use of secondary and printed sources, Martinez suggests the use of actual Comanche memoirs might have provided more legitimacy to the author’s claims. Gerald Betty engages his review of the monograph in a similar scholarly tone that Flores takes. Betty structures his review through the interest of academics in colonialism. Betty identifies that thesis’ claims that the Comanche created an empire, which enforced reversed colonialism upon European powers, will captivate scholars. Focusing on the thesis, Betty questions Hamalainen’s classification of the Comanches as a nomadic empire. Replying to his question, Betty writes that to consider a culture as an empire, they must influence aspects of society such as politics, economics, and religion. Concluding his review, Betty relates the Comanches to the Mongol and Turkish Empires to show how, though nomadic, influenced the Roman word. Also, the showing of the Comanches’ cultural influence on Colonial European powers identifies the Native American tribe as an