In this 10th lecture, I want to talk about another consequence of the Columbian Exchange
and that is Imperialism.
This lecture is called the Middle Ground and I need to explain that.
The Middle Ground is not a physical place that you travel to, it is a mental place that
both the French and the Indians have to go to in their minds in order to accommodate
the other side, to compromise, to learn to live peaceably.
The Middle Ground takes place in New France in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Context, Imperialism, like I said, it is a consequence.
Imperialism and colonization are one of the big significances or consequences of the Columbian
Exchange.
I think the best way to do this lecture, since it’s not a lecture about events; it’s
a lecture about mentalities, how people think and psychology.
So let me characterize the Middle Ground for a bit, and then I’m going to talk about
advantages and disadvantages for the 2 sides, in this case French colonizers, primarily
Jesuit priests in New France, and then the Huronian Indians, of course Lake Huron, named
for the Huronian nation.
So let’s characterize the Middle Ground.
It’s a search for accommodation, compromise, and understanding.
The Middle Ground exists because neither French on the one hand, nor the Indians on the other,
are powerful enough to simply impose their will, and if you can’t impose your will
you have to compromise, you have to reason with the other, and these 2 groups of people
are truly the other to each other, in language, tradition, culture.
The French, of course, are literate; the Huronians are not.
The French, of course, are Christian; the Huronians are not.
So there’s a lot of impediments to overcome here.
That’s what the Middle Ground is for.
The Middle Ground occurs at the very edge of French Imperialism, where French Imperialism
is at its weakest.
That’s why you have to compromise, because you can’t impose your will.
The Middle Ground allows us to look at the 2 sides equally.
We don’t have to privilege the French; we can look at the Huronians in as much detail
as we do the French.
The Middle Ground allows us to see that the Indians aren’t simply imposed upon or acted
against, that the Indians have agency, and their own will and motivation.
This is a relatively new type of history, a cultural history, where we search for the
meaning of things.
There are, of course, many other ways to approach this topic; Whig history is more traditional.
Let me briefly characterize it so you get some notion of the difference.
Whig history is notion that all of history has been preparing for and it is aimed at
the present state of things; history is written to justify present practices.
Whig historians make assumptions about the direction that history is taking.
For example, in American Exceptionalism we see that the United States’ history is one
of inevitable progress in the expansion of freedom; this allows us to do things like
justify the invasion of Iraq, for instance, because we’re spreading freedom.
Whig history tends to make the present look inevitable.
With Whig history you sort of start at the present and work your way back, and you can
see very quickly how we came to be in the present.
This history of the Middle Ground, this cultural history, allows us to start with the historical
actors themselves and move forward so that the outcome is not inevitable; we don’t
know how it’s going to end.
This makes history more interesting, and it is of course, how history unfolds – forward
and not backward.
So let’s talk about strengths and weaknesses of the 2 sides.
We’ll begin with the Jesuits.
The Jesuits’ strengths would be, well, they have a very powerful ally, do they not.
This new Christian God that they have brought with them to the New World appears to be much
more powerful than the Indian gods.
Other Jesuit advantages?
Well they’ve taken a vow of celibacy so they’re not going to chase Indian women,
which is a relief for many of the Indians.
What other advantages?
They’re literate.
They have the magic of writing and reading, which indeed looks like black magic to the
Indians.
These Indians, of course, are a people of oral tradition not literacy.
Other strengths – The Jesuits are obviously very brave men.
They go off into the wilds of North America with these Indian nations, barely speaking
the language, not knowing the culture, to spread the word of God, to lay the foundation
for French civilization to follow.
I’ve heard the Jesuits described as the Marine Corp of the Catholic Church, going
in first, doing the dangerous work, the heavy lifting, paving the way for European Christian
civilization to follow.
Weaknesses for the Jesuits and for the French – One weakness would be the way the Jesuits
dress, and you can Google this on your own.
Jesuit priests have long black robes, wide-brimmed black hats; this is not good hiking gear.
The Jesuits look fairly ridiculous trying to traverse the rough territory in New France,
tripping and stumbling with this cumbersome outfit.
The Jesuits have another disadvantage in that like most European men, they wear beards.
The Indians do not; in fact, the Indians regard European beards as disgusting, as food catchers
and fly traps.
They don’t understand why anybody would wear facial hair on their face as it’s repulsive
to the Indians.
Other disadvantages – In these northern latitudes we have short summers, and from
the bogs and the lakes you have the emergence of voracious mosquitoes and black flies.
This brief summer season, if you don’t have mosquito netting, it’s dangerous to go outside.
The Indians have found a cure for this; they smear animal fat over their skin.
This forms a protective sheen which the black fly and the mosquito can’t bite through.
The Jesuits regard smearing animal fat as repulsive, so they endure the mosquito bites.
This may sound trivial, but there are no Med First in New France.
So if you get an infection and it spreads, it could be life threatening.
So something as simple as mosquitoes is an obvious disadvantage for the Jesuits who don’t
know how to fight them off.
Other disadvantages – The Jesuits cannot reciprocate with the Indians.
Indian society is built in part on the idea of reciprocation.
You do for me, and then I’ll do for you.
You give me a present; I give you a present.
The Jesuits have nothing to give.
They’ve taken not only a vow of celibacy, but they’ve taken a vow of poverty so they
have no material, worldly gifts to give the Indians.
The Indians, on the other hand, give the Jesuits food, housing, protection, health care, and
the Jesuits have nothing to give back.
This, for the Indians, is annoying, as the Jesuits appear to be taking advantage and
not reciprocating.
Another disadvantage for the Jesuits is their constant admonishment of the Indians for their
sex lives.
Young Indian maidens, once they reach their sexual maturity, are expected to experiment
sexually with multiple partners.
Once they’re married, they’re expected to be loyal and faithful, but prior to that
they’re expected to experiment.
Now what does this look like to the Jesuit priests?
It looks like sin, promiscuity.
So the Jesuit priests are admonishing the Indians for their sex lines.
This of course, is annoying for the Indians.
Can you imagine the Indians taking this type of criticism from Jesuit priests who don’t
even have sex at all?
It’s like they want to make up the rules for a game that they don’t play.
So this is aggravating for the Indians.
And of course, the other disadvantage for the Indians, it’s actually an advantage
and a disadvantage.
I said the Jesuits brought with them a new, powerful, Christian God.
This is an advantage in that the Jesuits have a powerful ally, but it’s a disadvantage
in that it appears that this new Christian God is killing the Indians, which makes the
Indians fearful, hostile, and suspicious of the French.
Now how about the Huronians’ strengths and weaknesses?
The Indians have great self confidence in their culture; they believe Indian culture
to be superior to that of the Europeans.
The Indians are very good at turning Europeans into Indians.
We have a lot of evidence for this, Europeans who were either kidnapped or leave European
settlements and go live with the Indians, an attractive lifestyle in the eyes of many.
Other advantages for the Huronians – They have a home-court advantage, don’t they?
We are playing in their territory.
They know how to hunt and fish and thrive in this wilderness.
The one other advantage that I can think of off the top of my head is the Indians are
polytheistic, so they can simply take this new Christian God and include it in their
pantheon of already existing gods.
Of course, this does not please the Jesuits, obviously, who are monotheistic.
Weakness for the Huronians – Obvious weakness, first and foremost, lack of immunity to European
diseases.
A second weakness – They are a culture of oral tradition.
That is, they’re not literate.
Another weakness for the Indians – They become dependent upon European trade goods,
and any relationship that has dependency in it can become troublesome.
So these are some strengths and weakness of the 2 sides.
I want to briefly describe to you how this plays out in the Middle Ground.
You think about justice, all societies of any complexity have issues of justice.
The French, of course, like we do today, depend upon an impartial bureaucratic system to administer
justice.
The Indians find this hard to understand.
When one of their brothers or father or whoever is killed, they want to seek out the murderer,
and exact revenge upon him themselves.
And of course, in Western societies we allow an impartial bureaucracy to do this.
It will take time for the 2 sides to begin to see each other’s point of view on the
issue of justice.
Another example is sex, like we just discussed.
One of the ways in which the French and the Indians ameliorate the problem in the differences
in the way they view sex is that the French were very good at marrying Indians and creating
French and Indian families.
Much better than say the Spanish or the English.
Another way in which the Middle Ground is practiced would be in trade.
I’m trading with my Indian partner, it’s January, it’s cold.
I offer him 5 crates of European manufactured goods for his pallet of beaver pelts.
We make the trade; we’re both happy.
Now it’s August, it’s very hot.
I offer my Indian trading partner 1 crate of European manufactured goods for his pallet
of beaver pelts.
And my Indian trading partner wants to know why I’m trying to cheat him, why I gave
him 5 crates in January but only 1 in August.
He thinks that we have a relationship, a trading relationship, a friendship, and he wonders
why I’m trying to cheat him.
Well, I’m not trying to cheat him, it’s just that the beaver pelts aren’t worth
as much in August when it’s hot as they are in January when it’s cold.
You can see the problem here.
The 2 sides do not use the same method of applying value to things.
The French, like we, depend upon the market, supply and demand.
The Indians believe that each thing has an inherent value that does not change.
And then finally you can see another area where the Middle Ground is necessary and that
is war.
The 2 sides fight quite differently.
The Europeans with their firearms, desire an open space, a battlefield, where you can
line up a few thousand men and exchange volleys with the enemy, fire away until the first
side breaks.
The Indians believe this is absurd, to stand in an open field and allow people to shoot
at you.
The Indians would much prefer to ambush you, to poison your well, burn your house down
in the middle of the night, cut your throat while you’re sleeping in your tent.
The Indian says – I’ll kill you where I find you.
Unlike the Europeans who would regard some of these practices as cowardly or barbaric,
and would prefer to exchange volleys of lead in an open field.
And you can see this take place in the Middle Ground as the Americans begin to adopt Indian
methods of fighting.
You can see this during the Revolutionary War, with the ambushes and the guerilla warfare.
And then, of course, the Indians will adopt some military measures from the West regarding
supply and chain of command and things like this.
So finally, remember that the Middle Ground comes into effect because neither the French
nor the Indians are powerful enough to impose their will on the other side, the Middle Ground
disappears in the early 19th century because the British are now gone, the French are now
gone, and the Indians are confronted with the Americans, and the Americans are powerful
enough to simply impose their will on the Indians and move them West of the Mississippi
River.
Thanks.