Description: 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. 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. By the mid-eighteenth century, French-Indigenous families had achieved a great amount of power, which they would maintain as British imperial presence splintered on the eve of the American Revolution.
Brief description:
Karen L. Marrero is associate professor in the Department of History at Wayne State University in Detroit, associate of the Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University, and member of the Canadian Studies Committee Advisory Board, Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University.,
Review Quotes: "Detroit's Hidden Channels superbly demonstrates how families made history across the lands, lakes, and rivers of Canada and the United States. In lucid prose, Marrero interrogates the secrets of domesticities, slavery, Christianity, and denialism, exposing an intimate story of mixed-blood family networks in which fathers and mothers nenegotiated trade and gender norms to nurture a new world of French-Indigenous connection."
--ANN MCGRATH, W. K. Hancock Distinguished Professor of History and Kathleen Fitzpatrick Australian Laureate Fellow, Australian National University