What’s at Stake in the Indigenous Empire Debate

Did the Comanche and the Lakota constitute empires? The historian Pekka Hämäläinen has argued that they did during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and his work has been met with much praise. Some, however, have critiqued the use of the term “empire” to describe these Indigenous polities. I examine Hämäläinen’s argument and critiques thereof, and I argue that this debate has remained unresolved because it has been detached from any clear definition of “empire.” I thus discuss Hämäläinen’s claims, the critiques those claims have received, and debates over how to conceptualize “empire,” especially those associated with the “American empire debate” and the “new imperial history.” These trends in the literature—the former associated with American International Relations scholarship and the latter associated with British historiography—offer some of the most sustained considerations of what constitutes an empire in recent scholarship. By any of the reasonable definitions developed in this literature, I argue, neither the Comanche nor the Lakota can be said to have constituted empires. I maintain, however, that other Indigenous polities may aptly be considered empires, and I conclude that greater engagement with oft-overlooked Indigenous histories would be a fruitful avenue for further research on empire.