Abstract
Richard White is professor emeritus of American History, Chair Margaret Byrne, from Stanford University (California - USA). He made a name for himself in 1991 when he published The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815, which had a significant impact on American historiography on the history of indigenous peoples and colonial contacts. The sophisticated conceptual elaboration contained in the book forged a new theoretical framework for the interpretation of interactions between native communities and colonizing / expansionist / imperial societies. This theoretical framework started to be operated by historians in different historical eras, regions of the globe and social, political, economic and cultural relations. The concept was also appropriated by scholars from other disciplines such as Literary Criticism, Anthropology, Archeology and Political Science. White was a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History, in 1992 for The Middle Ground and in 2012 for Railroaded: the transcontinentals and the making of modern America. In this interview, carried out in the year that The Middle Ground celebrates 30 years of its first edition, among other things, he answers questions about his intellectual influences at the beginning of his career, his inspirations to elaborate the conceptual tool of the middle ground, his current projects and futures and on the fundamental questions that guide their research.
Keywords:
Richard White; interview, Middle Ground