Gregory H. Nobles

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Gregory H. Nobles | Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 58.3 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Westward Ho—But Westward How?

The New Encyclopedia of the American West. Edited by Howard R. Lamar. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Pp. xviii, 1324. $60.00.)

The American West: A New Interpretive History. By Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Pp. x, 616. $45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.)

The William and Mary Quarterly . . . is the leading journal for the study of early American history and culture. It ranges chronologically from Old World-New World contacts to the early nineteenth century. Its geographical coverage focuses on North America and the early United States and extends to Europe, West Africa, the Caribbean, New France, and the Spanish American borderlands—in short, the entire Atlantic world.

—William and Mary Quarterly Mission Statement¹

     Does the "entire Atlantic world" extend as far as the Pacific? A decade or so ago, such a question might have seemed almost an absurdity. Before the 1990s, those of us who research, write, and teach early American history—and, above all, who consider ourselves loyal readers of this journal—could probably have told anybody how far our field went, both chronologically and geographically, and have done so with scholarly confidence. These days, though, even the reassuring mission statement of our revered journal of record cannot fully offset an emerging uncertainty about our range of coverage. The very terms we use to define our field—early American—have become increasingly subject to reconsideration: What do we mean by "early"? What do we mean by "American"? 1

     My own ongoing reconsideration of these questions was most recently revived by a fan letter of sorts from the far side of the Atlantic world. A clergyman in Cannock, England, wrote a note to say a few kind words about a book I had written, American Frontiers, because reading about the frontier had apparently inspired him to think about his own place in the frontier experience: 2


I was introduced to the Frontier by watching, aged 5, Randolph Scott in "The Last of the Mohicans." As a child born and reared in Imperial India I was in a cultural Frontier situation myself. My son migrated to Atlanta some years ago where he met and married a girl whose Norwegian descendants trekked westward to Montana. The original covered wagon is still preserved on the family farm!!

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