From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History
Author(s)
Adelman, Jeremy; Aron, Stephen
Abstract
Taking up Herbert Bolton’s six-decade-old call for a comparative and common history of the Americas, the article synthesizes recent historiographical literature on borders and borderlands to connect the colonial and national histories of Canada, the United States, and Mexico. A framework that seeks to explain the diverse patterns of intercultural relations that characterized various North American frontiers challenges historians who ascribe the differences in frontiers solely to the original purposes of European colonizers. The appearance of borderlands – a term reserved for contested zones between colonial domains – decisively shaped the character of intercultural relations. In borderlands born of colonial rivalries, frontiers tended to produce more inclusive intercultural relations. An analysis of developments on both sides of the North Atlantic details how imperial competition between Britain, France, and Spain enabled Indian peoples in the Great Lakes, the lower Missouri Valley, and the greater Rio Grande region to deflect colonial powers from their initial projects (and projections). Within these borderlands, Indian “peoples in between” fashioned economic, diplomatic, and personal relations that rested, if not entirely on indigenous ground, at least on more common ground. The Age of Revolution, however, ushered in the emergence of nation-states that turned 18th-century borderlands into 19th-century bordered lands. As national borders supplanted colonial borderlands, inclusive intercultural relations yielded to more exclusive occupations.
