Steven C. Hahn – författare

Drawing on archaeological evidence and often-neglected Spanish source material, The Invention of the Creek Nation, 1670–1763 explores the political history of the Creek Indians of Georgia and Alabama and the emergence of the Creek Nation during the colonial era in the American Southeast. In part a study of Creek foreign relations, this book examines the creation and application of the "neutrality" policy—defined here as the Coweta Resolution of 1718—for which the Creeks have long been famous, in an era marked by the imperial struggle for the American South. Also a study of the culture of internal Creek politics, this work shows the persistence of a "traditional" kinship-based political system in which town and clan affiliation remained supremely important. These traditions, coupled with political intrusions by the region's three European powers, promoted the spread of Creek factionalism and mitigated the development of a regional Creek Confederacy. But while traditions endured, the struggle to maintain territorial integrity against Britain also promoted political innovation. In this context the territorially defined Creek Nation emerged as a legal concept in the era of the French and Indian War, as imperial policies of an earlier era gave way to the territorial politics that marked the beginning of a new one.

Drawing on archaeological evidence and often-neglected Spanish source material, The Invention of the Creek Nation, 1670–1763 explores the political history of the Creek Indians of Georgia and Alabama and the emergence of the Creek Nation during the colonial era in the American Southeast. In part a study of Creek foreign relations, this book examines the creation and application of the "neutrality" policy—defined here as the Coweta Resolution of 1718—for which the Creeks have long been famous, in an era marked by the imperial struggle for the American South. Also a study of the culture of internal Creek politics, this work shows the persistence of a "traditional" kinship-based political system in which town and clan affiliation remained supremely important. These traditions, coupled with political intrusions by the region's three European powers, promoted the spread of Creek factionalism and mitigated the development of a regional Creek Confederacy. But while traditions endured, the struggle to maintain territorial integrity against Britain also promoted political innovation. In this context the territorially defined Creek Nation emerged as a legal concept in the era of the French and Indian War, as imperial policies of an earlier era gave way to the territorial politics that marked the beginning of a new one.

The story of Mary Musgrove (1700-1764), a Greek Indian-English woman struggling for success in colonial society, is an improbable one.As a literate Christian, entrepreneur, and wife of an Anglican clergyman, Mary was one of a small number of ""mixed blood"" Indians to achieve a position of prominence among English colonists. Born to a Creek mother and an English father, Mary's bicultural heritage prepared her for an eventful adulthood spent in the rough and tumble world of Colonial Georgia Indian affairs. Active in diplomacy, trade, and politics--affairs typically dominated by men--Mary worked as an interpreter between the Creek Indians and the colonists--although some argue that she did so for her own gains, altering translations to sway transactions in her favour. Widowed twice in the prime of her life, Mary and her successive husbands claimed vast tracts of land in Georgia (illegally, as British officials would have it) by virtue of her Indian heritage, thereby souring her relationship with the colony's governing officials and severely straining the colony's relationship with the Creek Indians. Using Mary's life as a narrative thread, Steven Hahn explores the connected histories of the Creek Indians and the colonies of South Carolina and Georgia. He demonstrates how the fluidity of race and gender relations on the southern frontier eventually succumbed to more rigid hierarchies that supported the region's emerging plantation system.

In 1718 the British crown in the Bahamas pardoned 209 mariners accused of piracy. In A Pirate's Life No More, Steven C. Hahn explores the lives of these "retired” pirates. While there are a number of "famous" names on that list—Benjamin Hornigold, Charles Vane, and Palsgrave Williams, for example—the vast majority of the pardoned are "mostly nobodies." By focusing holistically on pirates—and on the pirates who aren’t famous—the book reclaims their humanity, connects the story of piracy at sea with the land-based communities that sometimes supported it, and illuminates the entangled histories of far-flung places in the Atlantic world. This study reveals that, for most individuals, forays into piracy were fleeting and opportunistic. Moreover, class, age, and regional divisions beset the pirate community, thereby precluding adherence to any single ideology justifying their actions. The pardon was most attractive to mariners possessing greater social and economic capital, which explains why so many of them were able to return to their homes and quickly return to honest maritime work.In addition to the standard sources employed by maritime historians, Hahn utilizes local administrative records from Britain and its American colonies, such as property, court, and church records. In so doing, he sheds new light on the ordinary activities in which the sailors were engaged when not involved in piracy and explores how they coped in the Bahamas and elsewhere after being pardoned. What emerges in this collective biography, then, are pirates who were mariners—of course—but also husbands, fathers, parishioners, and property owners.