In Modernity and Its Other Robert Woods Sayre examines
eighteenth-century North America through discussion of texts drawn
from the period. He focuses on this unique historical moment when
early capitalist civilization (modernity) in colonial societies,
especially the British, interacted closely with Indigenous
communities (the "Other") before the balance of power shifted
definitively toward the colonizers. Sayre considers a variety of
French perspectives as a counterpoint to the Anglo-American
lens, including J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur and
Philip Freneau, as well as both Anglo-American and French or French
Canadian travelers in "Indian territory," including William
Bartram, Jonathan Carver, John Lawson, Alexander Mackenzie,
Baron de Lahontan, Pierre Charlevoix, and Jean-Baptiste Trudeau.
Modernity and Its Other is an important addition to any North
American historian's bookshelf, for it brings together the social
history of the European colonies and the ethnohistory of the
American Indian peoples who interacted with the colonizers.