An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873

A lecture by Benjamin Madley (University of California, Los Angeles)

USC, Social Sciences Building, Room 250 

Between 1846 and 1873, California's Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. In his new book An American Genocide, historian Benjamin Madley is the first scholar to uncover the full extent of the slaughter. In this book talk, he will reveal the involvement of state and federal officials, the more than $1.7 million spent on campaigns against Indians, who did the killing, and the legacy of genocide in California today. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide.

Benjamin Madley is Assistant Professor of History at UCLA, where he specializes in Native America, the United States, and genocide in world history. He received his Ph.D. at Yale and was an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Dartmouth. This book is based on his dissertation, which won the Frederick W. Reinecke Dissertation Prize at Yale and the Phi Alpha Theta/Westerners International Dissertation Prize. His work has appeared in The American Historical Review, European History Quarterly, the Journal of British Studies, the Journal of Genocide Research, the Pacific Historical Review, the Western Historical Quarterly, and multiple edited volumes.

Refreshments will be served. Please RSVP at cagr@usc.edu.