The Upper Country: French Enterprise in the Colonial Great Lakes [Paperback]

A broad and compelling synthesis of the history of New France. -- Rebecca Nutt Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2009 An engaging traditional narrative of the expansion of New France. -- Leslie Choquette Business History Review 2009 A lively and lucid work of historical synthesis... Skinner's mining and close reading of primary sources, along with his well-written and concise narrative, brings the historical actors and events to life. -- Justin M. Carroll Annals of Iowa 2009 Recommended. General readers and undergraduates. Choice 2009 Skinner... knows his subject well. The Upper Country is a straightforward narrative of familiar milestones of the French expansion in the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys. -- Andrew Cayton, Reviews in American History 2009 Skinner's ambitious survey history of the upper country is timely... One major contribution this book makes is that it will likely expose more American students to the notion that the history of America is not just the story of the British colonists. -- Sara E. Chapman H-France 2009 Skinner provides a welcome introduction to many of those who made the Upper Country an important part of colonial North America... For those needing an introduction to the Upper Country of New France, this a good place for you to begin your quest. -- David Curtis Skaggs Northwest Ohio History Provides a fine, detailed analysis of French efforts to appropriate this region, to control and extract the greatest possible benefit from it, all the while emphasizing the importance of Amerindian alliances in both exploiting this region and in denying access to the British. -- Jean Lamarre Canadian Historical Review 2009 The French enterprise in the Upper Country was complex. Still, Skinner makes admirable sense of it within about two hundred pages by using both American and French historiographies to present a work 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 the United States but in Canada as well. -- Guillaume Teasdale Michigan Historical Review 2009 Skinner is particularly adept at expressing the shifting dynamic of French-Indian affairs and the fur trade, as well as the movements of allied forces in response to wars with the Fox, Chickasaw, and Natchez... An affordable, lively, well-mapped, and reasonably comprehensive synthesis of events in the upper country on the eve of a war that ultimately determined control of a continent. -- Michael F. Dove Itinerario: European Journal of Overseas History 2009 Claiborne Skinner's The Upper Country offers a succinct overview of one of the great, if too often untold, theaters of North American history. -- Daniel Samson Enterprise and Society 2010 An informative volume that would be a useful tool for the teaching of early Canadian, American, or North American pasts. -- Thomas A. Rumney Historical Geography 2011 A historical narrative that is very readable, engaging, and coherent... What Skinner accomplishes in less than two hundred pages is really quite remarkable. -- Gregory Kennedy H-French-Colonial 2011

The Upper Country melds myth and conventional history to provide a memorable tale of French designs in the middle of what became the United States. Putting the reader on the battlefields, at the trading posts, and on the rivers with voyageurs and their allies from the Indian nations, Claiborne Skinner reveals the saintly missionaries and jolly fur traders of popular myth as agents of a hard-nosed, often ruthless, imperial endeavor. Skinner's engaging narrative takes the reader through daily life at posts like Forts Saint Louis and Michilimakinac, illuminates the complexities of interracial marriage with the courtship of Michel Aco at Peoria, and explains how France's New World adventurism played a role in the outbreak of the Seven Years War and the beginning of the modern era.

In this story, many of the traditional heroes and villains of American history take on surprising roles. The last Stuart kings of England seem shrewd and even human; George Washington makes his debut appearance on the stage of history by assassinating a French officer and plunging Europe into the first truly global war.

From unthinkable hardship to dreams of fur trade profits, this fascinating exploration sheds new light on France and its imperial venture into the Great Lakes.