Frontier
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the political and geographic term. For all other terms, see Frontier (disambiguation)
Contents |
[edit] United States
In the United States, the frontier was the term applied to the zone of unsettled land outside the region of existing settlements of Americans. In a broad sense,the notion of the frontier was the edge of the settled country where unlimited free land was available and thus unlimited opportunity.
Throughout the history of both the United States and Canada, the expansion of settlement was largely from the east to the west, and thus the frontier is often identified with western areas of both countries. On the Pacific Coast, settlement moved eastward. In New England, it moved north.
'Frontier' was borrowed into English from French in the 15th century with the meaning "borderland," the region of a country that fronts on another country (see also marches). The use of frontier to mean "a region at the edge of a settled area" is a special North American development. (Compare the Australian "outback".)
[edit] Colonial frontier
See also: Colonial America, British colonization of the Americas, French colonization of the Americas
In the earliest days of European settlement of the Atlantic coast, the frontier was essentially any part of the forested interior of the continent beyond the fringe of existing settlements along the coast and the great rivers, such as the St. Lawrence, Connecticut, Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna River and James.
English, French, Spanish and Dutch patterns of expansion and settlement were generally quite different. The French habitants settled in villages along the St. Lawrence river and did not leapfrog west the way the Americans did. French fur traders, typically lived among the Native Americans with whom they did business. Such traders moved widely through the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watershed, as far as the Rocky Mountains. Actual French settlement in these areas, however, was limited to a few very small villages on the lower Mississippi and in the Illinois Country such as Green Bay, Wisconsin.[1] Likewise, the Dutch set up fur trading posts in the Hudson river valley, followed by large grants of land to patroons who brought in tenant farmers. They did not push westward. [2] In contrast, the English agriculture based colonies generally pursued a more systematic policy of widespread settlement of the New World for cultivation and exploitation of the land, a practice that required the extension of European property rights to the new continent. The typical English settlements were quite compact and small--under a square mile. Conflict with the Native Americans arose out of political issues: who will rule. Early frontier areas east of the Appalachian Mountains included the Connecticut river valley.[3] The French and Indian Wars of the 1760s resulted in a complete victory for the British, who took over the French territory west of the Appalachians to the Mississippi River. Americans began moving across the Appalachians into areas such the Ohio Country and the New River Valley.
[edit] The American frontier
Following the victory of the United States in the American Revolutionary War and the signing Treaty of Paris in 1783, the United States gained formal, if not actual, control of the British lands west of the Appalachians. Many thousands of settlers, typified by Daniel Boone had already reached Kentucky and Tennessee and adjacent areas. Some areas, such as the Virginia Military District and the Connecticut Western Reserve (both in Ohio), were used by the states as rewards to veterans of the war. The issue of how to formally include these new frontier areas into the nation was an important issue in the Continental Congress of the 1780s and was partly resolved by the Northwest Ordinance (1787). The Southwest Territory saw a similar pattern of settlement pressure.
For the next century, the expansion of the nation into these areas, as well as the subsequently acquired Louisiana Purchase, Oregon Country, and Mexican Cession, attracted hundreds of thousands of settlers. The question of whether the Kansas frontier would become "slave" or "free" was a spark of the American Civil War. In general before 1860 Northern Democrats promoted easy land ownership and Whigs and Southern Democrats resisted. The Southerners opposed Homestead Acts because they opposed the growth of a free farmer population that might oppose slavery.
When the Republican party came to power in 1860 they promoted a free land policy notably the Homestead Act of 1862, coupled with railroad land grants that opened cheap (but not free) lands for settlers. In 1890, the frontier line had broken up (Census maps defined the frontier line as a line beyond which the population was under 2 persons per square mile).
The popular culture impact of the frontier was enormous, in dime novels, Wild West shows, and, after 1910, Western movies set on the frontier.
The American frontier was generally the most Western edge of settlement and typically more democratic and free-spirited in nature than the East because of its lack of social and political institutions. The idea that the frontier provided the core defining quality of the United States was elaborated by the great historian Frederick Jackson Turner, who built his Frontier Thesis in 1893 around this notion.
[edit] Canadian frontier
A Canadian frontier thesis was developed by Canadian historians Harold Adams Innis and J. M. S. Careless. They emphasized the relationship between the center and periphery. Katerberg argues that "in Canada the imagined West must be understood in relation to the mythic power of the North." [Katerberg 2003] In Innis's 1930 work The Fur Trade in Canada, he expounded on what became known as the Laurentian thesis: that the most creative and major developments in Canadian history occurred in the metropolitan centers of central Canada and that the civilization of North America is the civilization of Europe. Innis considered place as critical in the development of the Canadian West and wrote of the importance of metropolitan areas, settlements, and indigenous people in the creation of markets. Turner and Innis continue to exert influence over the historiography of the American and Canadian Wests. The Quebec frontier showed little of the individualism or democracy that Turner ascribed to the American zone to the south. The Nova Scotia and Ontario frontiers were rather more democratic than the rest of Canada, but whether that was caused by the need to be self-reliant on the frontier itself or the presence of large numbers of American immigrants is debated.
The Canadian political thinker Charles Blattberg has argued that such events ought to be seen as part of a process in which Canadians advanced a "border"-- as distinct from a "frontier"--from east to west. According to Blattberg, a border assumes a significantly sharper contrast between the civilized and the uncivilized since, unlike with a frontier process, the civilizing force is not supposed to be shaped by that which it is civilizing. Blattberg criticizes both the frontier and border "civilizing" processes.
[edit] Canadian Prairies
The pattern of settlement of the Canadian prairies began in 1896, when the American prairie states had already achieved statehood. Pioneers then headed north to the "Last Best West." Before settlers began to arrive, the North West Mounted Police was dispatched to the region. When settlers began to arrive, a system of law and order was already in place and the Dakota lawlessness for which the American "Wild West" was famed did not occur in Canada. Before settlers arrived, the federal government also sent teams of negotiators to meet with the Native peoples of the region. In a series of treaties, the basis for peaceful relations was established and the long wars with the Natives that occurred in the United States largely did not spread to Canada. Like their American counterparts, the Prairie provinces supported populist and democratic movements in the early 20th century. [4]
[edit] Sea-to-sea grants
When the British divided their North American land into colonies, they did not place western boundaries on most of them, including Virginia and New York. Theoretically, the provinces extended to the Pacific Ocean. In practice, the western boundary was the peaks of the Appalachian Mountains, which divided French from British territories.
After the French and Indian War, Britain received the French territory East of the Mississippi river, but through the Proclamation of 1763, the new territory was closed to settlers, in effect returning to the old colonial boundaries. After the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution, the territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River returned to the newly independent states. Many claims overlapped, based on the original sea-to-sea grants. The Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution were silent on the matter (art. 4, sec. 3 clause 2, in pertinent part "nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims ... of any particular state"), but states were encouraged to resolve their conflict peacefully and to turn over "excess" western territory (over which they exercised no de facto control, since it was occupied by Indians) to the federal government, which in 1787 organized it into the Northwest Territory through the Northwest Ordinance.
[edit] Extensions of the "frontier" concept
Some sense of "frontier" has also been extended to other areas of achievement and conquest. President John F. Kennedy, for example, referred to his own legislative agenda as a "New Frontier." The television show Star Trek famously calls space the "final frontier." Others (e.g., Aldo Leopold, Gary Snyder, Stewart Brand) have seen the 'final frontier' as closer to home. In their view, there is a sort of frontier in the circumstances that challenge modern people to re-integrate themselves sustainably in a post-industrial circumstance here on Earth — complete with advanced technology. Frontier is also a famous indonesian Dota-AllStars player.
[edit] Europe
In the European Union, the frontier is a term used to describe the region beyond the expanding borders of the European Union. The European Union has designated the countries surrounding it as part of the European Neighbourhood. This is a region of primarily less-developed countries, many of which aspire to become part of the European Union itself. Current applicants include Turkey and Croatia. Ukraine has also set itself the primary task of eventually joining the Union, as have many small countries in the Balkans and South Caucasus. Romania and Bulgaria, both EU accession states, are due to become part of Europe in 2007. With all or most European states as members, the frontier may eventually become a more permanent border.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] US History
- The Frontier In American History by Frederick Jackson Turner
- Billington, Ray Allen. America's Frontier Heritage (1984), an analysis of the frontier experience from perspective of social sciences and historiography
- Billington, Ray Allen. Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier (1952 and later editions), the most detailed textbook, with highly detailed annotated bibliographies
- Billington, Ray Allen. Land of Savagery / Land of Promise: The European Image of the American Frontier in the Nineteenth Century (1981)
- Blattberg, Charles Shall We Dance? A Patriotic Politics for Canada (2003), ch. 3, a comparison of the Canadian 'border' with the American 'frontier'
- Hine, Robert V. and John Mack Faragher. The American West: A New Interpretive History (2000), recent textbook
- Lamar, Howard R. ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American West (1998), 1000+ pages of articles by scholars
- Milner, Clyde A., II ed. Major Problems in the History of the American West 2nd ed (1997), primary sources and essays by scholars
- Nichols, Roger L. ed. American Frontier and Western Issues: An Historiographical Review (1986) essays by 14 scholars
- Paxson, Frederic, History of the American Frontier, 1763-1893 (1924)
- Slotkin, Richard, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (2000), University of Oklahoma Press
[edit] Canada
- Blattberg, Charles Shall We Dance? A Patriotic Politics for Canada (2003), ch. 3, a comparison of the Canadian 'border' with the American 'frontier'
- Cavell, Janice. "The Second Frontier: the North in English-canadian Historical Writing." Canadian Historical Review 2002 83(3): 364-389. Issn: 0008-3755 Fulltext in Ebsco
- Clarke, John. Land, Power, and Economics on the Frontier of Upper Canada. McGill-Queen's U. Press, 2001. 747 pp.
- Colpitts, George. Game in the Garden: A Human History of Wildlife in Western Canada to 1940 U. of British Columbia Press, 2002. 216 pp.
- Forkey, Neil S. Shaping the Upper Canadian Frontier: Environment, Society and Culture in the Trent Valley. U. of Calgary Press 2003. 164 pp.
- Katerberg, William H. "A Northern Vision: Frontiers and the West in the Canadian and American Imagination." American Review of Canadian Studies 2003 33(4): 543-563. Issn: 0272-2011 Fulltext online at Ebsco
- Mulvihill, Peter R.; Baker, Douglas C.; and Morrison, William R. "A Conceptual Framework for Environmental History in Canada's North." Environmental History 2001 6(4): 611-626. Issn: 1084-5453. Proposes a five-part conceptual framework for the study of environmental history in the Canadian North. The first element of the framework analyzes approaches to environmental history that are applicable to the Canadian North. The second element reviews historical forces, myths, and defining characteristics that pertain to the region. A third element of the framework tests the validity of Turner's Frontier Thesis and Creighton's Metropolitan Thesis when applied to northern Canada. The fourth element consists of an overview of major northern environmental trends. The final element consists of four interrelated themes that identify the environmental relationships between northern and southern Canada.
[edit] External links
- ^ Clarence Walworth Alvord, The Illinois Country 1673-1818 (1918)
- ^ Arthur G. Adams, The Hudson Through the Years (1996); Sung Bok Kim, Landlord and Tenant in Colonial New York: Manorial Society, 1664-1775 (1987)
- ^ Allan Kulikoff, From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers (2000)
- ^ Laycock, David. Populism and Democratic Thought in the Canadian Prairies, 1910 to 1945. 1990; Seymour Martin Lipset, Agrarian Socialism (1950).
