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From Furs to Farms
The Transformation of the Mississippi Valley, 1762–1825
John Reda (Author)
9780875807867
Paperback / softback, published 20 December 2017
212 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.454 kg
Reda's book has much to recommend it. He admirably untangles the political machinations of francophone elites and American officials as they navigated the aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase and negotiated the fate of Spanish land grants. This volume sheds important new interpretive light on an often-underappreciated layer of US history. Highly recommended. By spotlighting the local and by looking beyond the boundaries that are to the boundaries that were, From Furs to Farms offers a worthy model for future studies of early American places. [This] succinct and pointed history of the white settlement of the Mississippi Valley challenges the oversimplified and convenient notion of Manifest Destiny.... Like the work of all diligent, mindful scholars, Reda's account of the history is complex. John Reda's From Furs to Farms addresses many issues that historians have identified as critical in the 'new' history of American western expansion and development. He does so persuasively, with exceptional elegance in prose and an impressive talent for narrative compression. Reda offers a new perspective on the history of the Illinois Country, which deserves a wide readership of those interested in the scholarship of the Midwest and the North American frontier.
This original study tells the story of the Illinois Country, a collection of French villages that straddled the Mississippi River for nearly a century before it was divided by the treaties that ended the Seven Years' War in the early 1760s. Spain acquired the territory on the west side of the river and Great Britain the territory on the east. After the 1783 Treaty of Paris and the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, the entire region was controlled by the United States, and the white inhabitants were transformed from subjects to citizens. By 1825, Indian claims to the land that had become the states of Illinois and Missouri were nearly all extinguished, and most of the Indians had moved west. John Reda focuses on the people behind the Illinois Country's transformation from a society based on the fur trade between Europeans, Indians, and mixed-race (métis) peoples to one based on the commodification of land and the development of commercial agriculture. Many of these people were white and became active participants in the development of local, state, and federal governmental institutions. But many were Indian or métis people who lost both their lands and livelihoods, or black people who arrived—and remained—in bondage. In From Furs to Farms, Reda rewrites early national American history to include the specific people and places that make the period far more complex and compelling than what is depicted in the standard narrative. This fascinating work will interest historians, students, and general readers of US history and Midwestern studies.