The Upper Country: French Enterprise in the Colonial Great Lakes by Claiborne A. Skinner

Abstract

Book Reviews133 Claiborne A. Skinner. The Upper Country:French Enterprise in theColonial Great Lakes. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Pp. 202. BibMographic essay. Glossary. Illustrations. Index. Maps. Notes. Cloth, $50.00; paper, $25.00. In The Upper Country,Claiborne A. Skinner presents a survey of the French regime in theMidwest (1660s to 1763). His objective is not only to provide American undergraduate students with a general portrait of the French enterprise in the region, but also to exhibit its connection to the imperial rivalries of the colonial era. Through this study of the Upper Country, Skinner attempts to answer a key question: "If the French and Indian War triggered the American Revolution, what then triggered the French and Indian War?" (p. ix) The book is divided into seven chronological chapters that explain the nature of the French imperial presence in theUpper Country and aim to clarify France's motives for fighting a war that proved to have dramatic consequences for thewestern world. The firstfive chapters of The Upper Country demonstrate that from the 1660s to the 1730s French authorities were split on the issue of whether or not to formally integrate the Upper Country into France's colony. Should they promote French setdement in theGreat Lakes or should they instead favor colonization solely within the St. Lawrence Valley, in present-day Quebec? In the end, the French imperial presence in the Upper Country largely expanded despite the Crown and not because of it.Consequendy, no actual colonization took place. Rather, the empire spread by making intricate diplomatic and economic alliances with most of the Algonquian groups in that area. The French built military/trading posts throughout the Midwest to promote the role of fur traders as intermediaries between the Indian world and the French empire. Up until the early 1710s this "imperial experiment" proved successful. However, the Fox Wars (1712 to 1738), inwhich the French joined with their allies to exterminate the Fox Indians and other groups, jeopardized France's imperial venture. The last two chapters of Skinner's book illustrate that the French Crown only came to fully acknowledge the importance of the Upper Country in the late 1730s. A growing number of Native Peoples, dissatisfied with the conditions related to their association with the French, had already begun to change sides and ally with Britain. Furthermore, the British Crown now seriously challenged France's claim to the Ohio Valley. From this evidence, Skinner concludes that the French authorities, after decades of internal disputes, finally 134 MichiganHistoricalReview understood that the value of New France as a whole "lay in neither farms, nor furs, nor mines, but rather in the upper country itself: its Indians, coureurs de bois, voyageurs, and Metis traders" (p. 155). As long as France held on to the Upper Country, it prevented Britain from acquiring most of North America and, more importantly, from developing into an even greater power and enlarging its influence amid those countries jockeying for supremacy. The French enterprise in the Upper Country was complex. Still, Skinner makes admirable sense of itwithin about two hundred pages by using both American and French historiographies to present awork that accurately summarizes the innovative research of the past two decades on this topic. In The Upper Country Skinner offers a survey that will be of great help to undergraduate students not only in theUnited States but inCanada aswell. Guillaume Teasdale York University Toronto, Ontario David A. Thomas. Michigan State College: JohnHannah and theCreation of aWorld Universityy 1926-1969. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2008. Pp. 540. Bibliography. Index. Photographs. Cloth, $39.95. As is noted in the introduction to this expansive book on Michigan State College (now Michigan State University), it is the second in a series on the history of that institution. The author has a long familiarity with MSU and East Lansing, where he grew up. He was awriter for theLansing State Journal and has made extensive use of newspaper accounts, interviews, and unpublished speeches and memos, as well as many images in his telling of this forty-three-year period in MSU's history. The book, which is more than five hundred pages long, is an imposing volume; it is organized...