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In the early 18th century Detroit became an important fur-trading post. In 1760, during the French and Indian War, it was surrendered to the British. France’s Indian allies, notably the Ottawa under Chief Pontiac, tried to capture the fort in 1763 but were defeated. The Jay Treaty (November 19, 1794) provided for the evacuation of the U.S. control.
In 1805 Detroit became the capital of the newly created Michigan Territory. In that same year a fire destroyed many buildings, and the town had to be rebuilt. Soon after the outbreak of the War of 1812, Detroit was again surrendered to the British, but the Americans recaptured it in September 1813. In 1815 Detroit was incorporated as a city.
In 1818 the first steamboat on the upper Great Lakes began regular runs between Buffalo, New York, and Detroit. Grain and other agricultural produce poured into the city by rail and water for processing and forwarding to other parts of the United States and to Europe. Detroit became one of the flour-milling centres of the country. It was the capital of the state of Michigan from its creation in 1837 until 1847, when the capital was moved to Lansing.
Following the American Civil War (1861–65), Detroit changed from its early role as a rural merchant to that of industrial magnate. It became the automobile capital of the world with the help of the manufacturer Henry Ford, who introduced the assembly line in 1914. Detroit’s industrial development accelerated during World War I, when it was an important producer of military armaments, and it attracted a large number of migrants, particularly African Americans from the South. In 1943 fighting broke out between whites and blacks in the city, and racial tension continued to be an issue in subsequent decades, often manifesting as “white flight,” the departure of whites from Detroit proper to the surrounding suburbs.
Sparked by a police raid on an unlicensed after-hours drinking establishment on July 23, 1967, five days of unchecked rioting in the city left 43 dead, almost 1,200 injured, and huge swaths of property destroyed by looting or fire before order was restored by the police, National Guardsmen, and U.S. Army troops. In the wake of the riot, white flight accelerated, and the sense of desperation and hopelessness that gripped the inner city was perhaps most clearly seen in Devil’s Night—a pre-Halloween tradition “celebrated” with looting and arson.
Many saw the election in 1973 of Detroit’s first African American mayor, Coleman Young, who would serve an unprecedented five terms, as a turning point. The construction of the Renaissance Center in 1977 rejuvenated the city’s declining riverfront. However, it failed to serve as an anchor for wider development, and the loss of jobs in the automotive industry brought new economic hardship and social problems. Moreover, in the last two decades of the 20th century, Detroit continued to suffer economically, and by the mid-1990s its population had fallen to half its peak in the 1950s.
As part of efforts by Young’s successor, Dennis Archer, to rebrand the city as a desirable destination for suburbanites, millions of dollars were spent on infrastructure, casino gambling was legalized along the Detroit River, and new stadiums were erected for the Lions (who had played in suburban Pontiac since 1975) and for the Tigers. Scandals plagued the tenure of the city’s next mayor, populist Kwame Kilpatrick, who was elected at age 31 but forced to resign in 2008 during his second term. Kilpatrick, who was briefly incarcerated for obstruction of justice in 2008, was later accused of having abused the power of the mayor’s office. In March 2013 he was convicted of multiple counts, including bribery, racketeering, and extortion, and he was ultimately sentenced to 28 years in prison.
In May 2009 former Pistons star Dave Bing was elected to complete Kilpatrick’s final months in office; in November of that year, Bing was reelected to a full four-year term. Faced with a city whose population had declined by one-fourth over the previous decade, Bing embarked on a dramatic plan to turn Detroit around. He shifted city dollars away from distressed neighbourhoods, essentially allowing them to wither on the vine, in an effort to encourage people to move to more stable areas. However, as the city’s financial situation continued to spiral downward, it became a challenge to provide even the most basic of municipal services.
In March 2013 Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder appointed Kevyn Orr, an attorney who had participated in the bankruptcy and restructuring of Chrysler in 2009, to be Detroit’s emergency manager. Orr was granted wide-ranging executive powers to deal with the city’s $19 billion debt, but he was unable to reach an agreement with the city’s creditors; chief among them were the holders of municipal bonds and the public employees who were entitled to retirement benefits. In July 2013 Orr submitted a claim for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection for Detroit, the largest such claim ever filed for a U.S. city. Bing—who had seen much of his mayoral authority transferred to Orr—announced that he would not seek another term, and that November voters elected Mike Duggan, a former Wayne county executive, as mayor. Duggan, who had orchestrated financial turnarounds at numerous Detroit-area organizations, was the city’s first white mayor in nearly 40 years. In finding the city eligible for bankruptcy in December 2013, a federal judge stated that cuts to municipal pensions would be legally permissible, although he criticized the city for failing to negotiate with its creditors in good faith. When Detroit officially emerged from bankruptcy in December 2014, Orr resigned, and control of the city’s operations reverted to Duggan and the city council.