ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the resonances between Hobbes’ relatively abstract account of sovereignty and some of the actual practices of sovereignty in the early histories of state building in North America. Tracing the workings of sovereignty in practice, and their resonances with Hobbes’ account, reveals both the complexity of sovereignty and how it has shaped possibilities for Indigenous peoples. The chapter thus extends the analysis of sovereignty developed in Chapter 2, emphasizing sovereignty not just as an abstract concept cleverly adapted to modern contexts by theorists such as Hobbes, but also as a wider range of practices through which authority is constituted and legitimated, whether in a text like Leviathan or in the building of states.
