Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814

Preface to the Paperback Edition

— xvii — PrefacetothePaperbackEdition D a v i d C u r t i s S k a g g s a n d L a r r y L . N e l s o n When a collection of papers from a scholarly conference held a dozen years ago merits a republication, it is indeed a privilege and a pleasure both to the editors and to the authors of the various pieces contained therein. The articles within this volume anticipated future investigations undertaken by their authors, revised scholarship on a number of issues, and continue to point to new directions for further research. The quest for control of nearly 20 percent of the world’s standing fresh water involved the interaction of a social complexity, a geographic immensity, and an economic diversity that defied easy resolution. What we sought at the 1998 conference at Bowling Green State University was to look at the long colonial wars era in the Great Lakes region (from the beginning of the French and Indian War in 1754 to the conclusion of the War of 1812 in 1814) as a continuous and fluid period of encounter, conflict, and adaptation between American, French, Canadian, British, and Native peoples—a period that transcended the temporal boundaries of the many individual conflicts marking the era. Further, we asked the participants to examine the era broadly, not just to look at the military interactions that took place, but to see the era as defined by complex and persistent cultural, geopolitical, and demographic transformations. Lastly, we wished to illustrate attempts to resolve the — xviii — D av i d C u r t i s S k a g g s a n d L a r ry L . N e l s o n issues resulting from this transformation short of armed conflict. For many during the era, the issues were too intractable and felt too intensely to resolve by any means short of warfare; but, as one reads in several of the following chapters, others at the same time believed peaceful accommodation was possible and they energetically sought avenues toward this end. This collection includes the final published scholarly work by the late distinguished Canadian historian W. J. Eccles. For other contributors, this collection signified the beginnings of careers that have since been marked by significant historic scholarship. For instance, Robert S. Cox authored Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism (2003). Eric Hinderaker solved an identity problem in The Two Hendricks: Unraveling a Mohawk Mystery (2010) and collaborated with Peter Mancall in a summary of scholarship entitled At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British North America (2003). In 2008, War of 1812 Magazine selected Philip Lord Jr.’s contribution to this book as one of the twenty-five most important articles on the War of 1812, and Lord expanded on this work in The Navigators: A Journal of Passage on the Waterways of New York 1793 (2003). Michael A. McDonnell wrote The Politics of War: Race Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (2007); Cornell University’s Jon W. Parmenter completed The Edge of the Woods: Iroquoia, 1534–1701 (2010); Leonard Sadosky, now on the faculty at Iowa State University, co-authored Jeffersonian America (2002) with Peter Onuf; Jeff Seiken contributed the colonial wars entry in Charles Scribner’s Sons’ Dictionary of American History; Susan Sleeper-Smith published Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes (2001); and Matthew C. Ward authored Breaking the Backcountry: The Seven Years’ War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754–1765 (2003). Other authors represented here crafted works that continued established careers that were already exemplified by distinguished scholarship. Among these are Carl Benn, best known for The Iroquois in the War of 1812 (1998) and his Osprey Essential Histories summary The War of 1812 (2002). Charles E. Brodine Jr. continues his editorial work at the Naval Historical Center and has written in Against All Odds: U.S. Sailors in the War of 1812 (2004) and Ironsides! The Ship, the Men and the Wars of the USS Constitution (2007). Andrew R. L. Cayton expanded upon his active publication career as co-editor of the massive The American Midwest: An Interpretative Encyclopedia (2007) to which several of this book’s authors contributed . Brian Leigh Dunnigan has since published Frontier Metropolis: Picturing — xix — P re fa c e to th e Pa p e rb a ck...