Bradley Dixon
Assistant Professor
Education
Ph.D., University of Texas, 2018
Fields of Interest
Native America, Early America, Atlantic History, Spanish Borderlands, Comparative Empires
Courses taught
American History to 1877 (HIST 2010)
North American First Peoples (HIST 3941)
Early North America to 1754 / Empires of Early North America (HIST 4620/6620)
Chucalissa: A Global History of a Native Town (HIST 3000)
Books
Dixon, Bradley. Republic of Indians: Empires of Indigenous Law in the Early American South. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025. (Link)
Journal Articles
-----. "'his one Netev ples': The Chowans and the Politics of Indian Petitioning in the Colonial South." The William & Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., vol. 76, no. 1 (Jan., 2019): 41-74. ****Winner of the 2020 Richard L. Morton Award from the Omohundro Institute.
Book Chapters
Dixon, Bradley. “Communication and Trade, in North America, to 1800.” In The Cambridge History of International Law. Volume III: International Law in Africa, the Americas and Oceania ed. Saliha Belmessous. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
-----. “‘From Their Children Born & Those Yet in the Womb’: Children and the Politics of the Native South, 1600-1730.” In Engaging Childhood in Vast Early America eds. Julia Gossard and Holly White. New York: Routledge, 2025. (Link)
Masters, Adrian and Bradley Dixon. “Indigenous Petitioning in the Early Modern British and Spanish New World: Chasing Patterns, Divergences, and Avenues of Future Research.” In Petitioning in the Atlantic World: Continuities and Change in Political Representation ed. Miguel Dantas da Cruz. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2022. (Link)
Dixon, Bradley. “‘Darling Indians’ and ‘Natural Lords’: Virginia’s Tributary Regime and Florida’s Republic of Indians in the Seventeenth Century.” In Meanings of Justice in British and Iberian America: Settler and Indigenous Law as Counterpoints, 1600-1825 eds. Richard Ross and Brian Owensby. New York: NYU Press, 2018. (Link)
—–. “‘As the Spaniards always have done’: The Legacy of Florida’s Missions for Carolina Indian Relations and the Origins of the Yamasee War.” In Entangled Empires: The Anglo-Iberian Atlantic, 1500-1830 ed. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. Pages 178-194. (Link)
Representative Conferences and Lectures
2025 “The Authors of Their Sovereignty: How Indigenous People Used Petitions in the Colonial South,” The Kenneth R. LaVoy, Jr. Memorial Lecture, Society for Colonial Wars, Florida Atlantic University, January 29, 2025.
2024 “‘While That Province Again Takes Another Form’: Rethinking the Destruction of the Indigenous Missions of Florida,” Southern Historical Association Annual Conference, October 25, 2024.
2023 “Southern Indigenous Imperial Reformers and the War of the ‘Woman King’ 1702-1714,” American Society for Ethnohistory Conference, Tallahassee, Florida, 2023. (Panel organizer).
2023 “Making the Case Against Colonialism: Indigenous Power and the ‘Trials’ of Florida and Virginia, 1600-1625,” Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Anglophone Studies, “Writing the First Peoples of the Americas: Quebec, Florida, Amazonia, the Caribbean,” Florida State University, April 7-9, 2023.
2022 “Move Over, Bacon, Now There’s Something Meatier! New Perspectives on ‘Bacon’s Rebellion’ and Its Legacies,” roundtable panelist, Omohundro Institute Conference, October 29, 2022.
2022 “‘From Their Children Born & Those Yet in the Womb’: Children as Political Actors in Southern Native American Petitions, 1600-1730,” Encountering Childhoods in Vast Early America, Williamsburg, Virginia, October 28, 2022.
2022 “‘Miserable Vassals’ and ‘True Subjects’: Forging Hybrid Polities in the Early American South,” The Allen Morris Forum on the Native South, Florida State University, October 11, 2022.
2022 “‘for my services and for those of my father’: Southeastern Native Petitions as Histories, 1600-1715,” Renaissance Society of America Conference, Dublin, Ireland, accepted, March 31, 2022. (Panel co-organizer with Craig Yirush, UCLA.)
2021 “‘grant us all our former Rights & priveledges’: Native American Petitioners and the Politics of Empire in the Early American South,” Southern Historical Association Conference, November 2020.
2020 “Neither Vassals nor Subjects: The Politics of the Native South, 16701-1715,” The Marcus Orr Center for the Humanities, University of Memphis, February 27, 2020.
2019 “‘made Horse [of us] to carrie’: Native American Porters in the Early South,” NEDTalks, University of Memphis, November 14, 2019.
2019 “The Weight: Native American Burdeners and the Entangled Politics of the Early South,” American Society for Ethnohistory Conference, September 27, 2019.
2019 “‘Wretched Vassals’ and ‘True Subjects’: Apalachee and Chickahominy Petitioners in a Colonial World,” Rethinking the Practice of Petitioning in the Habsburg and Colonial World, Harvard University, May 25, 2019.
Service
Faculty Senator, 2024-2025; Graduate Studies Committee, History Department