The story of one of the most powerful native empires in North American History will be the topic of the next Paul A. Olson seminar in Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Pekka Hamalainen, associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will deliver "Imperial Layers: How an Indigenous Empire Changed the Course of American History," at 3:30 p.m. Nov. 18 in the Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 Q St. Hamalainen's talk and a 3 p.m. reception in the museum are free and open to the public.

His talk is the fourth Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize Lecture and will be based on his book, "The Comanche Empire" (Yale University Press, 2008), the winner of the 2009 prize.

Hamalainen will describe how during the rise of imperial struggles in North America in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Comanche empire eclipsed its European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial control and cultural influence in the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, southern Great Plains and northern Mexico. He will propose a rethinking of the apparent inevitability of white domination in North America and the key features of the standard history -- from inter-group Native American relations, to French and Spanish imperial successes and failures, the early history of Mexico, Anglo-American imperial ambitions and the efforts of the post-Civil War United States military.

Hamalainen, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Helsinki in Finland, did most of his research for the book in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. He spent three years at UNL, first as a visiting Fulbright scholar, then as a research assistant for "The Encyclopedia of the Great Plains" (University of Nebraska Press, 2004).