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The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814
The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes contains twenty essays concerning not only military and naval operations, but also the political, economic, social, and cultural interactions of individuals and groups during the struggle to control the great freshwater lakes and rivers between the Ohio Valley and the Canadian Shield.
- GenresWar
656 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2001
About the author
David Curtis Skaggs
14 books3 followersAn historian specializing in colonial America and the early Republic, David Curtis Skaggs, Jr is professor emeritus at Bowling Green State University.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 13, 2013
This book is a collection of papers from an academic conference organized around the central premise that for 60 years, between the beginning of the French & Indian War in 1754 and the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 that ended the War of 1812 (ok so the Battle of New Orleans was fought in 1815 before news of the treaty reached the opposing forces)that there was 60 years of war for the control of the Great Lakes and the Ohio River valley that at various times involved the French, British, Americans and Indians.
This is history that's largely been overlooked and it's a lot more complex than is generally known. The family relationships that resulted from French fur traders marrying or living with Indian women from prominent Indian families controlled the fur trade, even after the end of the French & Indian War. Those relationships benefited both the Indian tribes and the fur traders. Rival fur traders invading their territories were often murdered.
One of the strengths of this book is the number of essays that explore the complexities of the interactions of the Indian tribes with the French, the British and the Americans, relations between different Indian tribes or within the Iroquois Confederacy. Iroquois who settled in Ontario (Upper Canada as it was known at the time) after the American Revolution and Iroquois on reservations in New York found themselves in a difficult spot when the War of 1812 started.
There's an essay about Quaker missionaries to the Seneca, Shawnee and other tribes. An essay delves into one of the more shameful episodes during this period, the 1782 Gnadenhutten massacre where peaceful Delaware Indians who were converted by Moravian missionaries were massacred by white settlers. During this same period, settlers in western Pennsylvania were in revolt against the Continental Army at Fort Pitt.
Of local interest is a history of early Detroit fortifications between its founding by Cadillac in 1701 and 1826. There's an interesting article on early attempts to improve navigation on the Mohawk River corridor and connections to Lake Ontario at Oswego. There's also a good study of the struggle for naval control of Lakes Erie & Ontario during the War of 1812 and how the U.S. Navy had to strip its ocean cruising ships, near shore flotillas and shore batteries of sailors, marines and cannon in order to build fleets on Lakes Erie & Ontario. The U.S. controlled Lake Erie after the Battle of Lake Erie but the U.S. was fortunate to reach a stalemate with the British on Lake Ontario by the end of the war because the U.S. couldn't keep up with the British ability to build and man ships on Lake Ontario.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of the Great Lakes region.
This is history that's largely been overlooked and it's a lot more complex than is generally known. The family relationships that resulted from French fur traders marrying or living with Indian women from prominent Indian families controlled the fur trade, even after the end of the French & Indian War. Those relationships benefited both the Indian tribes and the fur traders. Rival fur traders invading their territories were often murdered.
One of the strengths of this book is the number of essays that explore the complexities of the interactions of the Indian tribes with the French, the British and the Americans, relations between different Indian tribes or within the Iroquois Confederacy. Iroquois who settled in Ontario (Upper Canada as it was known at the time) after the American Revolution and Iroquois on reservations in New York found themselves in a difficult spot when the War of 1812 started.
There's an essay about Quaker missionaries to the Seneca, Shawnee and other tribes. An essay delves into one of the more shameful episodes during this period, the 1782 Gnadenhutten massacre where peaceful Delaware Indians who were converted by Moravian missionaries were massacred by white settlers. During this same period, settlers in western Pennsylvania were in revolt against the Continental Army at Fort Pitt.
Of local interest is a history of early Detroit fortifications between its founding by Cadillac in 1701 and 1826. There's an interesting article on early attempts to improve navigation on the Mohawk River corridor and connections to Lake Ontario at Oswego. There's also a good study of the struggle for naval control of Lakes Erie & Ontario during the War of 1812 and how the U.S. Navy had to strip its ocean cruising ships, near shore flotillas and shore batteries of sailors, marines and cannon in order to build fleets on Lakes Erie & Ontario. The U.S. controlled Lake Erie after the Battle of Lake Erie but the U.S. was fortunate to reach a stalemate with the British on Lake Ontario by the end of the war because the U.S. couldn't keep up with the British ability to build and man ships on Lake Ontario.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of the Great Lakes region.
September 11, 2026
The contents of this book are way outside of my wheelhouse and I really felt it. I was hoping to learn a bit more about the early history of the Midwest and the Great Lakes, seeing as how I live in this region, but I was rather disappointed with this one.
In fairness, this is a collection of essays by many others, and any such compendium is always going to be hit or miss because some authors are very engaging and some are not quite so compelling.
I had been meaning to learn more about brown water warfare, that is, naval war on inland waterways and lakes, and this seemed to be the exact thing I was looking for. Unfortunately not much is said about the actual warfare or about any ships on the Great Lakes.
I found many of these chapters tedious and irrelevant to the subject matter. For example there's a chapter on the Quaker Missions to the Native Americans. But what does that have to do with war on the Great Lakes? The author concludes that the Quakers were self-serving and their influence even reduced rights for Native women.
Okay that could be interesting to someone who is looking for more information on relations between Quakers and Native Americans, but it seemed out of place in a book about war. About empire. About the contest for the Ohio Valley.
The most interesting chapters were about the French policies during the Seven Years' War, and the reasons for France's defeat, and those that examined the role of the French after the loss of Canada. This was interesting because the French remained major players in the region, and one could study for a lifetime about the Metis and the Interior French. It was surprised to learn that the British were strongly reliant on the Interior French to manage their empire between the end of the Seven Years' War and the end of the American War of Independence.
The Metis and the Interior French are an interesting case of people existing between national identities. They were a mixture of Native and French, and often it was difficult to pin down who they were or whose side they were on.
It was also enlightening to learn about Charles Langlade, and other Metis who were able to recruit Native allies for either side during these conflicts. I think it was useful examining this from their perspective, instead of from a Eurocentric perspective where they were just tools of the British, French, or Americans. They had their own agency and had their own reasons for fighting.
I was surprised to learn, as well, that the Iroquois were divided on whether or not to help the British during the War of 1812. Logically they realized that the British were their only hope of salvation, though the British were as reliable as any great power who manipulated weak allies for its own purpose (see for example Austria's cynical use of the Serbs during the wars with the Turks in the eighteenth century, which is to say not very reliable), but the Natives were convinced that the Americans would swiftly overrun Canada and be masters of the whole continent.
Of course, they were in a for a shock when the British were remarkably successful during this war.
The chapter dealing with the fleets on the Great Lakes during the War of 1812 was much appreciated, especially the startling admission by Perry that the lakes could not be held against the continued injection of Royal Navy resources and that if the war continued the Americans would have likely been forced to abandon the lakes to the British.
The final chapter on perspective is truly fascinating. It examines why the contest for the Great Lakes has been so neglected, and suggests that the tendency of historiography to follow nationalist lines is at fault here. Historical works don't view North America holistically, but separate it between Canada and the United States, so the importance of the Great Lakes gets submerged.
It also suggests that the ultimate victory of the United States, especially over the Natives, was something shameful even for contemporaries. They were loathe to admit that the United States could act imperialistically too. This was a black stain on the early republic and one that understandably most Americans are not quick to discover.
This chapter ends with the curious observation that historical works have been moving in the direction away from triumphalism and Manifest Destiny, which has been gathering steam for some time since the Second World War in all aspects of American history. The author notes that many historians are beginning to conclude that the final American victory may not have been the ideal result. That perhaps it would have been better if France had won, or if the British had kept the Great Lakes.
This makes me think of Ghost Empire by Philip Marchand.
Unfortunately we learn very little about how any of these conflicts were actually fought or by whom. No weapons, no tactics. I had hoped that some light would be shed on the Spanish expedition to Fort St. Joseph during the American Revolutionary War. I had hoped that more might have been said about the Spanish presence in general, but Spain is hardly mentioned at all.
This is perhaps an unfair criticism since my own focus has been on Hispanic history and I am disappointed whenever Spain is left out, and I would hardly argue that Spain was crucial to this region in the way that Britain and France were.
I also had hoped to find mention of a young Winfield Scott, who had his baptism of fire in the war along the Canadian border. I recently read a biography of him and was impressed by his conduct during the War of 1812. He isn't even mentioned once.
There are some chapters that are just exceedingly boring, like the chapter on land speculation in the Firelands. Who cares if some land speculator did not make a profit on selling land for eight dollars an acre or whatever his price was? This seems very specific and microhistorical.
Entries such as this made the book excessively long, and while sometimes it was interesting to read about the state of Fort Detroit or waterways on the Mohawk before the Erie Canal, it was mostly just very long-drawn out text that I would have liked to skip.
Annoyingly, also, there is no bibliography. I had to painstakingly comb through the endnotes in each chapter, which is a tiresome time-consuming process. It is a simple thing that just list all the sources at at the end but I will never understand why some publishers just don't do it.
If Native Americans and their customs are your interest, or the interaction of French, British, and American influences in the Great Lakes, subjects I know very little about in all honesty, then this would be for you. But do not expect to find much on the actual warfare. I made the mistake of taking on this huge scholarly work with almost no background information and everything either went over my head or was of little interest to me.
In fairness, this is a collection of essays by many others, and any such compendium is always going to be hit or miss because some authors are very engaging and some are not quite so compelling.
I had been meaning to learn more about brown water warfare, that is, naval war on inland waterways and lakes, and this seemed to be the exact thing I was looking for. Unfortunately not much is said about the actual warfare or about any ships on the Great Lakes.
I found many of these chapters tedious and irrelevant to the subject matter. For example there's a chapter on the Quaker Missions to the Native Americans. But what does that have to do with war on the Great Lakes? The author concludes that the Quakers were self-serving and their influence even reduced rights for Native women.
Okay that could be interesting to someone who is looking for more information on relations between Quakers and Native Americans, but it seemed out of place in a book about war. About empire. About the contest for the Ohio Valley.
The most interesting chapters were about the French policies during the Seven Years' War, and the reasons for France's defeat, and those that examined the role of the French after the loss of Canada. This was interesting because the French remained major players in the region, and one could study for a lifetime about the Metis and the Interior French. It was surprised to learn that the British were strongly reliant on the Interior French to manage their empire between the end of the Seven Years' War and the end of the American War of Independence.
The Metis and the Interior French are an interesting case of people existing between national identities. They were a mixture of Native and French, and often it was difficult to pin down who they were or whose side they were on.
It was also enlightening to learn about Charles Langlade, and other Metis who were able to recruit Native allies for either side during these conflicts. I think it was useful examining this from their perspective, instead of from a Eurocentric perspective where they were just tools of the British, French, or Americans. They had their own agency and had their own reasons for fighting.
I was surprised to learn, as well, that the Iroquois were divided on whether or not to help the British during the War of 1812. Logically they realized that the British were their only hope of salvation, though the British were as reliable as any great power who manipulated weak allies for its own purpose (see for example Austria's cynical use of the Serbs during the wars with the Turks in the eighteenth century, which is to say not very reliable), but the Natives were convinced that the Americans would swiftly overrun Canada and be masters of the whole continent.
Of course, they were in a for a shock when the British were remarkably successful during this war.
The chapter dealing with the fleets on the Great Lakes during the War of 1812 was much appreciated, especially the startling admission by Perry that the lakes could not be held against the continued injection of Royal Navy resources and that if the war continued the Americans would have likely been forced to abandon the lakes to the British.
The final chapter on perspective is truly fascinating. It examines why the contest for the Great Lakes has been so neglected, and suggests that the tendency of historiography to follow nationalist lines is at fault here. Historical works don't view North America holistically, but separate it between Canada and the United States, so the importance of the Great Lakes gets submerged.
It also suggests that the ultimate victory of the United States, especially over the Natives, was something shameful even for contemporaries. They were loathe to admit that the United States could act imperialistically too. This was a black stain on the early republic and one that understandably most Americans are not quick to discover.
This chapter ends with the curious observation that historical works have been moving in the direction away from triumphalism and Manifest Destiny, which has been gathering steam for some time since the Second World War in all aspects of American history. The author notes that many historians are beginning to conclude that the final American victory may not have been the ideal result. That perhaps it would have been better if France had won, or if the British had kept the Great Lakes.
This makes me think of Ghost Empire by Philip Marchand.
Unfortunately we learn very little about how any of these conflicts were actually fought or by whom. No weapons, no tactics. I had hoped that some light would be shed on the Spanish expedition to Fort St. Joseph during the American Revolutionary War. I had hoped that more might have been said about the Spanish presence in general, but Spain is hardly mentioned at all.
This is perhaps an unfair criticism since my own focus has been on Hispanic history and I am disappointed whenever Spain is left out, and I would hardly argue that Spain was crucial to this region in the way that Britain and France were.
I also had hoped to find mention of a young Winfield Scott, who had his baptism of fire in the war along the Canadian border. I recently read a biography of him and was impressed by his conduct during the War of 1812. He isn't even mentioned once.
There are some chapters that are just exceedingly boring, like the chapter on land speculation in the Firelands. Who cares if some land speculator did not make a profit on selling land for eight dollars an acre or whatever his price was? This seems very specific and microhistorical.
Entries such as this made the book excessively long, and while sometimes it was interesting to read about the state of Fort Detroit or waterways on the Mohawk before the Erie Canal, it was mostly just very long-drawn out text that I would have liked to skip.
Annoyingly, also, there is no bibliography. I had to painstakingly comb through the endnotes in each chapter, which is a tiresome time-consuming process. It is a simple thing that just list all the sources at at the end but I will never understand why some publishers just don't do it.
If Native Americans and their customs are your interest, or the interaction of French, British, and American influences in the Great Lakes, subjects I know very little about in all honesty, then this would be for you. But do not expect to find much on the actual warfare. I made the mistake of taking on this huge scholarly work with almost no background information and everything either went over my head or was of little interest to me.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews