20th anniversary edition with new preface by the author.

In The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650 – 1815, Richard White argues, “The middle ground is the place in between: in between cultures, peoples, and in between empires and the nonstate world of villages. It is a place where many of the North American subjects and allies of empires lived. It is the area between the historical foreground of European invasion and occupation at the background of Indian defeat and retreat” (pg. x). He argues that there was no clear boundary between the Indian and white worlds. Further, “the real crisis and the final dissolution of this world came when Indians ceased to have the power to force whites onto the middle ground. Then the desire of whites to dictate the terms of accommodation could be given its head. As a consequence, the middle ground eroded” (pg. xv).
White writes, “Because the French and Algonquians were trading partners and allies, the boundaries of the Algonquian and French worlds melted at the edges and merged” (pg. 50). Further, “in the pays d’en haut, actual Indians and whites of widely different social class and status had, for a variety of reasons, to rely on each other in order to achieve quite specific ends. It was these Frenchmen (for Frenchwomen would not appear until much later) and Algonquian men and women who created a common ground – the middle ground – on which to proceed” (pg. 51). He writes, “In trying to maintain the conventional order of its world, each group applied rules that gradually shifted to meet the exigencies of particular situations. The result of these efforts was a new set of common conventions, but these conventions served as a basis for further struggles to order or influence the world of action” (pg. 52). He continues, “The middle ground itself, however, did not originate in councils and official encounters; instead, it resulted from the daily encounters of individual Indians and Frenchmen with problems and controversies that needed immediate solution” (pg. 56). Finally, “The operation of the middle ground must be understood within a dual context. First, there was the weakness of hierarchical controls within Algonquian villages and the frailty of any authority French officials exerted over Frenchmen in the West. Second, there was the cultural threat each society seemed to pose to the elite of the other” (pg. 59).
In terms of trade, “It was the English, of course, who gave the Algonquians the freedom to extort this hybrid exchange system from the French. When the French tried to arrange the trade solely according to the supply of furs and the demand in Europe, the Algonquians went to the English, who virtually always offered them better terms than the French” (pg. 119). White continues, “The Algonquians wrestled the French onto the middle ground, but for them, too, the alliance had its uncomfortable demands. The ritual subordination to Onontio did not always come easily in a society that knew little of subordination” (pg. 183). Of their alliance, White concludes, “A creature of the middle ground, and perhaps its most imposing creation, the French-Algonquian alliance was, nonetheless, a fragile structure threatened by French dreams of force and the rivalries of village politics” (pg. 185). Turning to Pontiac, White writes, “Pontiac’s Rebellion was almost the reverse of the ultimate racial showdown [historian Francis] Parkman imagined. Instead of revealing an unbridgeable chasm between Indians and whites, it succeeded in restoring, at least diplomatically, a common world and a common understanding. Out of the radically different British and Algonquian interpretations of the meaning of the British victory over the French, it forged a new, if tenuous, accommodation between the races. The British replaced the French as fathers. The true story of Pontiac’s Rebellion is not just the dramatic assaults on the British forts that Parkman chronicled but also the accommodation of the Algonquians and the British” (pg. 270).
White continues, “In the decade between Pontiac’s Rebellion and the outbreak of Lord Dunmore’s War in 1774, the diplomatic middle ground, like an island in a storm, eroded away on one side while slowly expanding on another. This rapid erosion of the diplomatic middle ground revealed the basic fragility of British-Algonquian relations. British Indian diplomacy did not rest on a bedrock of common life. British backcountry settlers usually hated and feared Indians” (pg. 323). Turning to economic connections, White writes, “Dependency is an economic, political, and social relationship, but it can also be an environmental relationship. Economic change can produce environmental changes that undermine people’s ability to feed and clothe themselves. Although the Algonquians retained a precarious hold on economic independence into the nineteenth century, they did have to face increasingly serious changes in the material world around them” (pg. 486). White concludes, “On the middle ground, the landscape of the pays d’en haut had long ceased to be just a dreamscape where dreams took physical shape. As the eighteenth century waned, the pays d’en haut had increasingly become a place where dreams failed to materialize at all. Algonquians continued to dream, but it was as if they dreamed of the dead – people who never returned” (pg. 523). ( )

I admit that I didn't read this volume from cover to cover - I had it on interlibrary loan and it was due back before I had time to do it justice, but I learnt a lot from the chapters I did read, particularly about the period immediately after the Iroquoian defeat of the peoples living in what is now southwestern Ontario. ( )

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 his work of the same title. While there is a definite sense of place, the titular Middle Ground is much more than a geographic location. White argues that “between 1650 and 1815 (Native Americans and Europeans) constructed a common, mutually comprehensible world” in this region. But it was a cultural, economic, and social middle ground as well as geographic. White used many primary sources for his research, including American, British, Canadian, and French diplomatic archives in addition to a great deal of secondary literature regarding the Native population of the region.
For White, this organization came about as the first (French) explorers and fur traders made their way into the Great lakes region. At this point, even with a deficit in weaponry, the Indian population had the upper hand and could force the Europeans to accept a mutually agreeable relationship. After the American Revolution, this organization began to break down as the Native American power and influence shrank along with the Native population, and the Middle Ground was finished by 1815.
White also has a new interpretation of the organization of the area. For him, the power in the region lay at the village level. Empire and country were far too distant to have much influence in the Middle Ground. It was the individual village leaders that held the power to determine policy, such as it was, as well as diplomatic ties. The area was home to a staggering array of different peoples—different ethnicities, cultures and religions. White explains how, as they came together in the region, they formed multi-ethnic communities, blending languages, cultures, and religions. The result was by no means a homogenous society, but rather one in which each person could see some reflection of their former selves and learned to value those of others.
In telling the story, White did use the more famous inhabitants, such as Daniel Boone and Ottawa war Chief Pontiac, but he also uses the stories of more modest inhabitants as illustrations of his thesis. By using such examples, he was able to show the degree to which his arguments hold true. White spends a great deal of the book at this personal level, and it absolutely helps to illustrate the larger focus of the community. White also does a service by bringing the native peoples front and center, rather than placing them at the periphery. In most of the scholarship before his, Indians existed mainly as mere props to advance the European settlers. In White’s book, they are the ACTORS. They are just as responsible (if not more so, given his argument that the region started from a place of Native strength) for the creation of the Middle Ground as any of the European explorers, missionaries, or traders. Additionally, his intimate portrayals allowed him to illustrate the differences between the two societies. Most notably, he contrasted the limits placed on European women to the greater freedom allowed native women.
Somewhat ironically, according to White, the final failure of the Middle Ground occurred as the Native population came to be seen as a group that needed to be protected (from themselves as much as any other threat). Once the American Revolution and resultant War of 1812 had been concluded, the United States government stopped seeing the natives as a people and started viewing them as a responsibility. The result is the codification of paternalism which led to Native Americans being categorized as “less than” for the better part of two centuries. I’m not sure that the break was that clean and neat in reality, but it does make for a clean ending to White’s wor
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Slogged my way through The middle ground to finally finish it and post a 977 for the Dewey Decimal Challenge. This was an interesting book, and actually many parts of it read very quickly, provided I was OK with not know exactly who the players were, where the action was, or to some extent what was going on. Which perhaps makes the book sound more cryptic than it was. Other parts were difficult to follow. Extensive footnotes on each page made many of them fairly short and easy to continue page turning.

This was an academic analysis of the relationships between: Indians and Indians (e.g. Algonquins and Iroquois), Indians and French, Indians and British, and Indians and Americans at the local (tribe/village/frontier/forts) through empire scales in the area that became the midwest (both US and Canada) in the Great Lakes region. The depth and breadth of this book is quite impressive. It was also impressively confusing for a neophyte like me not familiar.

What I learned from this was essentially that in between the time of initial colonial contacts and the indiscriminate killing, there was a moment of attempts for trade and commerce and ideas as well as material objects moved back and forth, creating a tenuous situation which the author calls 'The Middle Ground'. This Middle Ground was rooted in ideas and customs for trade, revenge, murder, property, marriage, war, peace, alcohol, religion, etc. Negotiation was the key and nothing was quite permanent in a shifting landscape of motives, understanding, advantage, and power. These themes are examined over time with many examples and stories of leaders some of whom are generally recognizable (e.g. Pontiac, Tecumseh) others completely archaic (to me).

Some good tidbits, but overall this book is difficult to just jump into without at least some familiarity with the subject. Fascinating and well researched but it also knows it is being written for an academic audience and often skimps on the story telling and is heavy on the analysis. ( )