The Middle Ground

Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815

De: Richard White

Narrado por: Bob Souer

Duración: 18 h y 54 m

Resumen del Editor

An acclaimed book and widely acknowledged classic, The Middle Ground steps outside the simple stories of Indian-white relations—stories of conquest and assimilation and stories of cultural persistence. It is, instead, about a search for accommodation and common meaning. It tells how Europeans and Indians met, regarding each other as alien, as other, as virtually nonhuman, and how between 1650 and 1815 they constructed a common mutually comprehensible world in the region around the Great Lakes that the French called pays d'en haut. Here the older worlds of the Algonquians and of various Europeans overlapped, and their mixture created new systems of meaning and of exchange. Finally, the book tells of the breakdown of accommodation and common meanings and the re-creation of the Indians as alien and exotic. First published in 1991, the twentieth anniversary edition includes a new preface by the author examining the impact and legacy of this study.

©1991, 2011 Cambridge University Press (P)2022 Tantor

A great book, not for beginners

This is a good book, but it is an academic monograph. Casual readers might be annoyed that it’s not so much a straightforward history book as it is an analysis of cultural interactions over a specific period.

By the end I felt that some of the points were belabored, but still it is an eye opening book about the complexities of European-Native American relations in the 17th-early 19th centuries. Naturally, far more complicated than we are taught in grade school.

Pleasantly surprised.

Most assuredly not your ‘Indian Starter Book’, but for those fairly well heeled ‘in the know’ concerning the tribes, I’m confident that you may just find a gem. It’s tough to come across untold stories / perspectives, therefore I was pleased.