“Let them make SOUP:” The Essential Ingredients of Euro-American Grand Strategy and the Amerindian Conquest

Abstract

This article assesses the grand strategy of Anglo-American settlers in North America, toward Amerindians and expansion, from first encounter to final conquest and addresses one of the greatest and longest struggles over territory on earth between 1600 and 1900 from a unified, or a strategic, perspective. It argues that any grand strategy at all, let alone the same one, underlay these events. The assessment uses American culture and politics, to explain the roots for a behavior which often occurred below the surface of state:  to show what Americans thought about war and Amerindians, and how they acted on these ideas and conquered a continent.