No Useless Mouth - by Rachel B Herrmann (Paperback)

About the Book

"Argues that Native American and formerly enslaved communities lost the fight against hunger because white officials in the United States, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone curtailed the abilities of men and women to fight hunger on their own terms"--

Book Synopsis

"Rachel B. Herrmann's No Useless Mouth is truly a breath of fresh air in the way it aligns food and hunger as the focal point of a new lens to reexamine the American Revolution. Her careful scrutiny, inclusive approach, and broad synthesisâ-all based on extensive archival researchâ-produced a monograph simultaneously rich, audacious, insightful, lively, and provocative."â-The Journal of American History

In the era of the American Revolution, the rituals of diplomacy between the British, Patriots, and Native Americans featured gifts of food, ceremonial feasts, and a shared experience of hunger. When diplomacy failed, Native Americans could destroy food stores and cut off supply chains in order to assert authority. Black colonists also stole and destroyed food to ward off hunger and carve out tenuous spaces of freedom. Hunger was a means of power and a weapon of war.

In No Useless Mouth, Rachel B. Herrmann argues that Native Americans and formerly enslaved black colonists ultimately lost the battle against hunger and the larger struggle for power because white British and United States officials curtailed the abilities of men and women to fight hunger on their own terms. By describing three interrelated behaviors--food diplomacy, victual imperialism, and victual warfare--the book shows that, during this tumultuous period, hunger prevention efforts offered strategies to claim power, maintain communities, and keep rival societies at bay.

Herrmann shows how Native Americans, free blacks, and enslaved peoples were "useful mouths"--not mere supplicants for food, without rights or power--who used hunger for cooperation and violence, and took steps to circumvent starvation. Her wide-ranging research on black Loyalists, Iroquois, Cherokee, Creek, and Western Confederacy Indians demonstrates that hunger creation and prevention were tools of diplomacy and warfare available to all people involved in the American Revolution. Placing hunger at the center of these struggles foregrounds the contingency and plurality of power in the British Atlantic during the Revolutionary Era.

Thanks to generous funding from Cardiff University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

Review Quotes

One of the strengths of Herrmann's book is the broad topical and chronological vista on the Revolutionary era that she presents. Along with her portrait of the Haudenosaunee, she illustrates how Cherokee and Creek Indians in southeastern America fought against the Americans in a vicious cycle of victual warfare.

-- "Journal of British Studies"

Rachel B. Herrmann brings new nuance to the American Revolutionary period. Her book is a worthy addition to the bookshelves of serious scholars of the American Revolution, especially those interested in Indigenous and Black history.

-- "Hudson River Valley Review"

No Useless Mouth is an ambitious book about hunger, war, power, and conflict in the British colonial world. Herrmann persuasively shows that the study of hunger allows us to reread the writings of British negotiators, American military officers, and colonial governors and to see how food diplomacy and victual warfare were not just strategies of the powerful but could also be employed against these same officials as deliberate survival strategies. Struggles over food and hunger were tools of empowerment and resistance for Native American and enslaved communities.

-- "William & Mary Quarterly"

No Useless Mouth is an important study that reveals how entwined hunger and power were in the long American Revolution. Further, Hermann does commendable work in elucidating how American Indians and, to a lesser extent, the formerly enslaved retained agency throughout the period through expression of the hunger behaviors of food diplomacy, victual warfare, and victual imperialism. The monograph would be an excellent companion to any survey related to the experience of American Indians in the mid-eighteenth through early nineteenth century.

-- "American Indian Quarterly"

[E]nvironmental historians, especially ones in dialogue with Indigenous studies, will be interested in how No Useless Mouth relates hunger to larger changes in land use and ownership. No Useless Mouth demonstrates how studies of hunger are always studies of power.

-- "Environmental History"

Herrmann analyzes a vast range of archival sources--predominantly military in origin--for evidence of [Indigenous nations and peoples of African descent] experience of hunger changed over time. Brisling with provocative insights regarding the roles played by food in cross-cultural relations, settler colonialism, declension narratives, and the time and geography of the revolution itself, her wide-ranging study adds much to our understanding of how the American Revolution transformed the Atlantic World until circa 1810. [S]he has made a persuasive case for how an informed appreciation of how [hunger-prevention initiatives] can illuminate the ways in which power relations between white and nonwhite populations changed over time.

-- "American Historical Review"

Herrmann's work points researchers in constructive directions. There is reason to believe that No Useless Mouth will become a standard introduction to food history. Herrmann deserves high praise for attempting this expansive study and, what's more, with limited conceptual guidance. She deserves yet more for completing this significant contribution to our understanding of power relations in a turbulent period in Atlantic-world history.

-- "H-War"

Rachel B. Herrmann's No Useless Mouth is truly a breath of fresh air in the way it aligns food and hunger as the focal point of a new lens to reexamine the American Revolution. Her careful scrutiny, inclusive approach, and broad synthesis--all based on extensive archival research--produced a monograph simultaneously rich, audacious, insightful, lively, and provocative.

-- "The Journal of American History"

Sweeping in scope yet tightly focused on a meticulously driven methodology, Rachel B. Herrmann's No Useless Mouth points the way toward new historiographical directions. Herrmann takes a new and innovative turn, diving into the archives to parse out the ways that this power intersected with attempts to declare, maintain, and control food sovereignty. What results is a fascinating journey into a history that many if not most readers of these pages today have left behind generations ago--the battle over hunger.

-- "Early American Literature"

About the Author

Rachel B. Herrmann is Lecturer in Modern American History at Cardiff University. She is the editor of To Feast on Us as Their Prey.