Does Fort Frontenac disprove Richard White's Middle Ground? | Historia Nostra Book Club

Erin chats with Scott Berthelette about the history of Fort Frontenac in Kingston, ON to consider the limitations of a popular concept in North American history: The Middle Ground. Proposed in Richard White's classic 1991 book by the same name, the middle ground explains a process of accommodation between Indigenous peoples and European settlers. The thing is, though, this concept is limited and there are important exceptions to it. In fact, some historians now say that this concept obscures more than it reveals. Scholars like Heidi Bohaker have disproven elements of White's framework, while others (including Michael McDonnell) have argued that White was simply wrong.

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📚 Sources & Further Reading

📖 Heidi Bohaker, "Nindoodemag": The Significance of Algonquian Kinship Networks in the Eastern Great Lakes Region, 1600-1701,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Jan., 2006), pp. 23-52.

📖 Kathleen DuVal, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

📖 Elizabeth Mancke, “Spaces of Power in the Early Modern Northeast,” in New England and the Maritime Provinces: Connections and Comparisons, edited by Stephen J. Hornsby and John G. Reid (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2005), 32–49.

📖 Michael McDonnell, “Maintaining a Balance of Power: Michilimackinac, the Anishinaabe Odawas, and the Anglo-Indian War of 1763,” Early American Studies 13 (2015), 43.

📖 Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991, 2011).

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Historia Nostra is written, produced, and created by Erin Isaac (PhD student in History, Western University). In our Experiencing History series, Erin visits museums and heritage sites across North America to review how history is taught on site.

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00:00 Introduction
00:46 What is the Middle Ground
06:54 Part 1: Beginnings 1667
09:32 Part 2: Haudenosaunee Expansion 1608-1701
12:07 Part 3: The Iroquois Wars Resume
14:58 Part 4: An Uneasy Peace? 1701-1758
18:13 Conclusion