Masters of Empire
Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A radical reinterpretation of early American history from a native point of view
In Masters of Empire, the historian Michael McDonnell reveals the pivotal role played by the native peoples of the Great Lakes in the history of North America. Though less well known than the Iroquois or Sioux, the Anishinaabeg who lived along Lakes Michigan and Huron were equally influential. McDonnell charts their story, and argues that the Anishinaabeg have been relegated to the edges of history for too long. Through remarkable research into 19th-century Anishinaabeg-authored chronicles, McDonnell highlights the long-standing rivalries and relationships among the great tribes of North America, and how Europeans often played only a minor role in their stories. McDonnell reminds us that it was native people who possessed intricate and far-reaching networks of trade and kinship, of which the French and British knew little. And as empire encroached upon their domain, the Anishinaabeg were often the ones doing the exploiting. By dictating terms at trading posts and frontier forts, they played a crucial role in the making of early America. Through vivid depictions of early conflicts, the French and Indian War, and Pontiac's Rebellion, all from a native perspective, Masters of Empire overturns our assumptions about colonial America and the origins of the Revolutionary War. By calling attention to the Great Lakes as a crucible of culture and conflict, McDonnell reimagines the landscape of American history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McDonnell (The Politics of War), associate professor of history at the University of Sydney, deploys impeccable research skills to challenge the "middle grounds" historical interpretation of Native American European encounters. He reveals how the Anishinaabeg, a Great Lakes tribe that has received little attention from outside chroniclers of the 17th and 18th centuries, treated the arriving French and English as minor characters in a long-standing series of tribal rivalries. McDonnell opens with a compelling account of the politics and culture of the region, already riven by indigenous competition and warfare when the French arrived in the 17th century, and introduces Charles Michel Mouet de Langlade and his mixed-race family. In 1752, de Langlade led an attack on a Miami Indian village in the Ohio Valley that set the stage for the Seven Years' War (1754 1763), which "has long been mistakenly called the French and Indian War' " and which pitted Native Americans and French and English settlers against one another for control of the area. With a fascinating reexamination of the political, military, and economic details of the war, as well as a stunning final chapter on the American Revolution and the meaning of (in)dependence, McDonnell admirably expands readers' understanding of "Indian country on its own terms." Maps & illus.
