ABSTRACT
Unlike American historians, who have long dealt with indigenous peoples as part of their own national history, historians of Britain have been able to avoid including encounters with colonized peoples within their domestic history. What needs to be stressed, to a greater extent, is the way in which imperialism became a significant constitutive element in British identities. The rich and impressive American historiography offers much to historians of Britain and its empire; at the same time, the American literature would be strengthened by attention to the encounters with indigenes in other parts of the empire. The American historiography is set within an internal chronology of the United States, in which the story of indigenous peoples in the North- and South-East comes to a tragic nadir in the Jacksonian period. A British imperial perspective offers alternative perspectives, with a collection of different chronologies.
