What was the Sixty Years' War?

You know the Cold War, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror, but have you heard of the Sixty Years' War?

Is the Sixty Years' War completely "made-up"?

Well, it consists of several very real military conflicts punctuated by periods of varying levels of tension among a number of groups of people. The Sixty Years' War was simply a power strugle for the Great Lakes. However, to bolster the argument that it was "made-up," let me point out that during the actual 60 years of 1754 to 1814, nobody ever spoke of the "Sixty Years' War."

Instead, the term "Sixty Years' War" was coined by modern academic historians.

Let's go back to ancient Greece when the historian Thucydides wrote about the Peloponnesian War. It was a conflict between the Athenian and Spartan Empires from 431 to 404 B.C. As David Curtis Skaggs writes in his overview of the Sixty Years' War (page 1), the Peloponnesian War "consisted of a series of subconflicts, interrupted by shaky peace, political intrigue, and policy decisions." So Skaggs' reading of Thucydides led to the insight that something similar to the Peloponnesian War occurred on this continent. As Skaggs tells it, a

broader reading of the great Greek historian...brought me to see the multifaceted struggle to control the great freshwater lakes and their basins... not as unconnected events, but rather as part of a broader sequence of episodes involving the Native Americans and Europeans of French, British, and Creole backgrounds for control of the finest bodies of fresh water in the world.

Complicated stuff.

To help you wrap your mind around the Sixty Years' War, it may help to know the names of the conflicts. I'm sure you're familiar with at least some of them.

1. The French and Indian War
2. Pontiac's Rebellion
3. Lord Dunmore's War
4. Frontier Skirmishes associated with the American Revolution
5. The Northwest Indian War (Miami Confederacy vs. The United States)
6. The War of 1812 (western theater)

So, was the Sixty Years' War an important piece of American history?  ....Yes!

I think we're onto something here.

Source:
Skaggs, David Curtis, and Larry L. Nelson. The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001.

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