BOOK REVIEWS
Detroit's First American Decade,
1796-1805. By F. Clever Bald.
(University of Michigan Publications,
History and Political Science,
Vol. XVI. Ann Arbor, Mich., University
of Michigan Press, 1948.
276p., including bibliographical essay
and index. $4.50.)
This is far more than a study of a few
neglected years in the
early history of a great metropolis,
interesting only to the local pride
school of history enthusiasts, the
zealous antiquarians, and the
patient genealogists. Here is local
history at its best, a careful and
revealing scrutiny of every aspect of a
community's life, which adds
concreteness and meaning to the broader,
and often too general,
syntheses of the better rewarded
historians who deal in nations and
states, rather than families and
individuals. But Dr. Bald had an
advantage over most other toilers in
local history. He was not writ-
ing the history of a typical isolated
frontier village and trading
post. Detroit was one of the great
crossroads of North America,
the key to the control of the Indians
and the valuable fur trade of
the Great Lakes region, a garrison town,
with a strangely assorted
mixture of nationalities and races,
which was about to witness the
hoisting of a new flag above its
fort--the third in its history-as the
book begins.
The story of its first American decade,
1796-1805, hitherto
neglected, is an interesting one. The
essential themes are the slow
weakening of the grip of the British
mercantile aristocracy with its
Montreal connections, the imperviousness
of the French majority to
change of any kind, though they accepted
American rule without
protest, and the increasing influence of
a small group of American
newcomers in business and politics, with
official and military pres-
tige a factor in drawing support from
other groups. Within this
pattern may be seen the operations of
the fur trade at first hand,
the problems of the merchant in a
near-barter economy, the lot of
the hapless and shiftless Indians,
garrison life in an isolated military
post where the maintenance of discipline
was difficult and friction
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