The Middle Ground

A mutually comprehensible world was established by Europeans and Indians in 1650 in the region around the Great Lakes that the French called the Pays d en haut This account reveals how a middle ground for sharing values thrived for 165 years. New Download [ The Middle Ground ] By [ Richard White ] For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr This is one of those touchstone books everyone working in early American history, or Native American history, or early Canada, or the Atlantic world, or early modern Francea huge swath of historians, in other words, need to have read this book It is true that the book is getting on in years a little, and it has been picked at periodically over the last two decades, but the thing is, you have to read it in order to understand the people who are arguing against it Important book, in other wo This is one of those touchstone books everyone working in early American history, or Native American history, or early Canada, or the Atlantic world, or early modern Francea huge swath of historians, in other words, need to have read this book It is true that the book is getting on in years a little, and it has been picked at periodically over the last two decades, but the thing is, you have to read it in order to understand the people who are arguing against it Important book, in other words Keep it on the shelf What White is arguing is that at the fringes of the French empire , in the great lakes region of North America, the French were not strong enough to dictate to the Indians, but the Indians were similarly unable to dictate...In the wake of the War of 1812, Americans re conceptualized the Shawnee leader Tecumseh in a familiar tale of lost love In this myth making endeavor, Tecumseh is presented as a fully assimilated American character, equipped with the charm, appeal, and charisma of some of America s greatest white, male politicians Tecumseh falls in love with an Anglo American beauty, asks her to marry him, and upon her insistence that he fully integrate into American society retreats into the woods This sto In the wake of the War of 1812, Americans re conceptualized the Shawnee leader Tecumseh in a familiar tale of lost love In this myth making endeavor, Tecumseh is presented as a fully assimilated American character, equipped with the charm, appeal, and charisma of some of America s greatest white, male politicians Tecumseh falls in love with an Anglo American beauty, asks her to marry him, and upon her insistence that he fully integrate into American society retreats into the woods This story sets up a false dichotomy between assimilation and cultural resistance that would not only saturate myths of European Indian relations, but also infiltrate histories of such exchanges Historian Richard White s groundbreaking work, The Middle Ground Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650 1815, intends to fracture this constructed binary and introduce a new framework for understanding interactions between indigenous communities and European colonists in early America.White s ren...White examines the frontiers between European colonists and native American Indians in the 16th and 17th Centuries He describes how people of utterly alien, intrinsically hostile cultures can comingle and learn to interact in a manner that is in many respects decent and mutally beneficial He does not attribute successful negotiation to mutual understanding on the contrary, it could be better described as a conspiracy of mutual misunderstanding He does not idealise the people involved on the White examines the frontiers between European colonists and native American Indians in the 16th and 17th Centuries He describes how people of utterly alie...Richard White argues that a process of accommodation, itself the result of creative misunderstandings xxvi , emerged from interactions between French, British, and Algonquins in the pays d en haut from the middle of the 17th century until the War of 1812 The critical element enabling the emergence of the physical and metaphorical spaces where this accommodation took place, what White calls the middle ground , is the inability for long periods of time of whites to either dictate to or ignore Richard White argues that a process of accommodation, itself the result of creative misunderstandings xxvi , emerged from interactions between French, British, and Algonquins in the pays d en haut from the middle of the 17th century until the War of 1812 The critical element enabling the emergence of the phys...I read this book as a selection of Let s Talk About It Oklahoma It was interesting and I did learn some things That said, it was muchof a time commitment than I want to make for a book club Very academic if this is your field of study.Much of American history presents the view of Native Americans as the conquered peoples in a linear story that begins with the landing of Columbus in the Caribbean and ends with the Trail of Tears and Wounded Knee Richard White seeks to reframe that story, at least in the Great Lakes region To do so, White has created the Middle Ground, the area known by the French as the pays d en haut or upper country, which he writes of in h...I ve lived in the pays d en haut practically my whole life Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois I ve even made, compared to most people, an effort to learn about the history of the landscape and the Native Americans who have lived here in the past 400 years And yet starting The Middle Ground still felt like the ground had changed under my feet I knew that colonization here was complex and violent, in the abstract, but I guess I had a pretty poor estimate of not just how intricate th...Richard White s landmark 1991 work The Middle Ground, based on the greater Great Lakes region which the French called the pays d en haut, pioneered a focus and a vocabulary for the study of intercultural relationships between colonists and natives As in the Old Southwest, where the agricultural decline of the Little Ice Age was compounded by the onset of European plagues and violent competition for access to trade networks, White tells us that the world that existed prior to the mid 17th centur Richard White s landmark 1991 work The Middle Ground, based on the greater Great Lakes region which the French called the pays d en haut, pioneered a focus and a vocabulary for the study of intercultural relationships between colonists and natives As in the Old Southwest, where the agricultural decline of the Little Ice Age was compounded by the onset of European plagues and violent competition for access to trade networks, White tells us that the world that existed prior to the mid 17th century had ceased to be It had been shattered Only fragments remained Like a knife scoring a pane of glass, warfare apparently farbrutal than any known previously among these peoples had etched the first fine dangerous lines across the region in the 1640sAnd then, between 1649 and the mid 1660s, Iroquois attacks had fallen like hammer blows across the length and breadth of the lands bordering the Great Lakes and d...The Middle Ground is an impressive study of the interaction between the French, British, Indian and American peoples in the Great Lakes Region, or the pays d en haut Richard White attempts to recast the history of this area as a complex intermingling of Indian culture and European influence in place of the traditional narrative of Indian defeat by European conquest His detailed perspective of relationships between these communities greatly expands on previous discussions of White Indian relat The Middle Ground is an impressive study of the interaction between the French, British, Indian and American peoples in the Great Lakes Region, or the pays d en haut Richard White attempts to recast the history of this area as a complex intermingling of Indian culture and European influence in place of the traditional narrative of Indian defeat by European conquest His detailed perspective of relationships between these communities greatly expands on previous discussions of White Indian relations The Middle Ground for which the book is named is a metaphorical space created by the Indians, Europeans, and American colonists in the Great Lakes Region during the Iroquois wars This space was fashioned through negotiated interaction between multiple parties including trade, intermarriage, breeding, violence, and relig...White presents an extremely successful examination of his thesis.

• English
• 01 February 2017
Richard White
• Paperback
• 562 pages
• 0521424607
• Richard White
• The Middle Ground