War Under Heaven

Pontiac, the Indian Nations, & the British Empire
Erscheinungsjahr 2004
ISBN: 978-0-8018-7892-3
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 384 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 227 mm, Gewicht: 532 g

Honorable Mention from the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Awards for History

The 1763 Treaty of Paris ceded much of the continent east of the Mississippi to Great Britain, a claim which the Indian nations of the Great Lakes, who suddenly found themselves under British rule, considered outrageous. Unlike the French, with whom Great Lakes Indians had formed an alliance of convenience, the British entered the upper Great Lakes in a spirit of conquest. British officers on the frontier keenly felt the need to assert their assumed superiority over both Native Americans and European settlers. At the same time, Indian leaders expected appropriate tokens of British regard, gifts the British refused to give. It is this issue of respect that, according to Gregory Dowd, lies at the root of the war the Ottawa chief Pontiac and his alliance of Great Lakes Indians waged on the British Empire between 1763 and 1767.

In War under Heaven, Dowd boldly reinterprets the causes and consequences of Pontiac's War. Where previous Anglocentric histories have ascribed this dramatic uprising to disputes over trade and land, this groundbreaking work traces the conflict back to status: both the low regard in which the British held the Indians and the concern among Native American leaders about their people's standing—and their sovereignty—in the eyes of the British. Pontiac's War also embodied a clash of world views, and Dowd examines the central role that Indian cultural practices and beliefs played in the conflict, explores the political and military culture of the British Empire which informed the attitudes its servants had toward Indians, provides deft and insightful portraits of Pontiac and his British adversaries, and offers a detailed analysis of the military and diplomatic strategies of both sides. Imaginatively conceived and compellingly told, War under Heaven redefines our understanding of Anglo-Indian relations in the colonial period.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dowd, Gregory Evans

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Militärgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Indigene Völker

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction. Heroes of History, Heaven, and Earth
Chapter 1. Ottawas, Delawares, and the Colonial World, 1615–1760
Chapter 2. A Worldly War
Chapter 3. An Otherworldly War
Chapter 4. Besieging Britons, 1763
Chapter 5. Defending the Villages, 1764
Chapter 6. Mobs, Germs, and the Status of American Indians
Chapter 7. Uneasy Conclusions
Chapter 8. Deaths and Legacies
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Dowd, Gregory Evans
Gregory Evans Dowd is a professor of history and American culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 and War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire.

Gregory Evans Dowd is a professor of history and American Culture and the director of Native American Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of Groundless: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier and A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815, also available from Johns Hopkins.