Daniel K. Richter
Daniel K. Richter is a distinguished historian and author recognized for his significant contributions to the study of colonial North America and Native American history prior to 1800. Born on October 15, 1954, in Erie, Pennsylvania, Richter graduated summa cum laude from Thomas More College and earned his PhD from Columbia University in 1984. He began his academic career as a teacher at Dickinson College and later at the University of East Anglia. Richter's influential works include "The Ordeal of the Longhouse," which explores the Iroquois League's responses to European colonization, and "Facing East from Indian Country," a critical examination of early American history from a Native perspective. He has received numerous accolades for his writings, including prestigious awards from the Organization of American Historians and a Pulitzer Prize finalist recognition. Throughout his career, he held various academic positions, culminating in a professorship at the University of Pennsylvania where he also directed the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. Beyond his professional achievements, Richter enjoys choral music and woodworking and shares a family life with his wife, Sharon L. Mead, and their two children.
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Subject Terms
Daniel K. Richter
Historian
- Born: October 15, 1954
- Place of Birth: Erie, Pennsylvania
Contribution: Daniel K. Richter is an award-winning historian and author, known for his studies of colonial North America and Native American history before 1800.
Background
Daniel K. Richter was born on October 15, 1954, in Erie, Pennsylvania. He attended Thomas More College, graduating summa cum laude in 1976. He pursued graduate studies from Columbia University, completing his PhD in 1984. His research adviser at Columbia was historian Alden Vaughan.
After graduation, Richter became a teacher at Dickinson College, a private liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He also taught at the University of East Anglia, a public research university based in Norwich, England.
Career
In 1987, Richter coedited, with historian James H. Merrell, the essay collection Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois and Their Neighbors in Indian North America, 1600–1800. The book looks at military and diplomatic relations among the Native American peoples of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century North America.
The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (1992), Richter's first book, uses a variety of primary sources to examine the responses of the peoples of the Five Nations tribes (also known as the Iroquois League or the Iroquois Confederacy) to the issues brought upon by the European colonists. In his study, Richter looks at how the people of the Five Nations maintained their cultural autonomy despite the dominance of Europeans on the land.
The Ordeal of the Longhouse earned Richter high acclaim and several awards. It won the 1993 Ray Allen Billington Prize given by the Organization of American Historians. That organization also awarded Richter the Frederick Jackson Turner Award, given for an author's first book on American history. In 1994, the book was selected as an outstanding academic book of the year by the magazine Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
In his second book, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (2001), Richter examines early American history within the Native American–controlled lands of the eastern United States. The book looks at how the Native Americans interacted with the European colonists and how they attempted to make sense of the new world into which they were forced. Richter analyzes how Native Americans reinvented themselves in order to deal with the biological, economic, and environmental changes brought by the Europeans.
Facing East from Indian Country won the Louis Gottschalk Prize, given for an outstanding historical or critical study on the eighteenth century by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. In 2002, the book was a finalist in the history category for the Pulitzer Prize.
Richter coedited with William A. Pencak the 2004 essay collection Friends and Enemies in Penn's Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania. The essays in the book look at how Native Americans and colonists in Pennsylvania reinvented their cultures in interactions with each other.
Richter wrote the foreword for the 2009 book The Munsee Indians: A History, by Robert S. Grumet. The work examined the Munsee tribe of Native Americans who famously sold Manhattan to colonists.
Richter's book Before the Revolutions: America's Ancient Pasts (2011) looks at pre-Revolutionary War history in North America, spanning several centuries. Richter discusses a variety of cultures, including the Native Americans, Spanish, and Dutch, and examines how these diverse people struggled for control of land and resources. The book was praised for its exhaustive range of subjects and Richter's approach to the material.
Richter continued his studies of the relationship between Native Americans and Europeans in his 2013 book Trade, Land, Power: The Struggle for Eastern North America. Richter looks at this relationship in terms of how much each side understood the basis of power through trade, conquest, and resistance. Reviews of the book noted Richter's challenging arguments and thorough research.
Richter became a professor of early American history at the University of Pennsylvania in 1999, a position he held until his retirement in 2023. There he also became the director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies in 2000 and coedited the Early American Studies monograph series. He became the school's Edmund J. and Louis W. Kahn Term Professor of History in 2007 and the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History in 2009. Richter also took on the role of acting chair of the University of Pennsylvania History Department from 2013 to 2014. He earned the university's Provost's Award for Distinguished PhD Teaching and Mentoring in 2016 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017–18.
Impact
Richter's studies have contributed greatly to the field of Native American and early American studies. His work on the native people of Pennsylvania and relations between colonists and native people have led to several resourceful scholarly books on the subjects.
Personal Life
Richter married Sharon L. Mead, an author and translator, in 1980. The couple had two children together. Richter's hobbies included choral music and woodworking.
Bibliography
"Daniel K. Richter." University of Pennsylvania School of Arts & Sciences, Department of History, 2020, live-sas-www-history.pantheon.sas.upenn.edu/people/faculty/daniel-k-richter. Accessed 17 Sept. 2024.
"Historian to Discuss William Penn and Native Americans at Rowan University." Rowan Today. Rowan U, 9 Feb. 2011. Web. 22 Aug. 2013.
"Interview with Dan Richter." McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 5 July 2023, www.mceas.org/news/2023/07/05/interview-dan-richter. Accessed 17 Sept. 2024.
Pencak, William A., and Daniel K. Richter, eds. Friends and Enemies in Penn's Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2004. Print.
Richter, Daniel K. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001. Print.
Richter, Daniel K. Interview by Rachel Herrmann. The Junto, 13 Jan. 2016, earlyamericanists.com/2016/01/13/an-interview-with-daniel-k-richter. Accessed 17 Sept. 2024.
Richter, Daniel K. Trade, Land, Power: The Struggle for Eastern North America. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2013. Print.