Pontiac’s War: Its Causes, Course, and Consequence, 1763-1765 is a compelling retelling of one of the most pivotal points in American colonial history, in which the Native peoples staged one of the most successful campaigns in three centuries of European contact. With his balanced analysis of the organization and execution of this important conflict, Middleton sheds light on the military movement that forced the British imperial forces to reinstate diplomacy to retain their authority over the region. Spotlighting the Native American perspective, Pontiac’s War presents a careful, engaging account of how very close to success those Native American forces truly came.

Imaginatively conceived and compellingly told, War under Heaven redefines our understanding of Anglo-Indian relations in the colonial period.

French-Indigenous families were a central force in shaping Detroit’s history. Detroit’s Hidden Channels: The Power of French-Indigenous Families in the Eighteenth Century examines the role of these kinship networks in Detroit’s development as a site of singular political and economic importance in the continental interior. Situated where Anishinaabe, Wendat, Myaamia, and later French communities were established and where the system of waterways linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico narrowed, Detroit’s location was its primary attribute. While the French state viewed Detroit as a decaying site of illegal activities, the influence of the French-Indigenous networks grew as members diverted imperial resources to bolster an alternative configuration of power relations that crossed Indigenous and Euro-American nations. Women furthered commerce by navigating a multitude of gender norms of their nations, allowing them to defy the state that sought to control them by holding them to European ideals of womanhood. By the mid-eighteenth century, French-Indigenous families had become so powerful, incoming British traders and imperial officials courted their favor. These families would maintain that power as the British imperial presence splintered on the eve of the American Revolution.