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Book Review
| Frontiers and Boundaries in U.S. History. Edited by Cornelis A. van Minnen and Sylvia L. Hilton (Amsterdam, VU University Press, 2004, Notes. € 32.90.)
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At the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner offered a definition of the frontier: "the meeting point between savagery and civilization." The painter George Catlin would not have agreed. Though he, too, considered the geographic, economic, and cultural implications of the frontier, Catlin might rather have described it as the low point of a U, the highest points being the Euro-American society of the East, from which he had come, and the as yet relatively untainted culture of some of the western tribes, whom he would visit and paint. Convinced that civilization and its concomitant evils of "whiskey, the smallpox, and the bayonet" would not only continue the decimation of the Indian population but also destroy their cultures, Catlin set out to become their "pictorial historian" (Notes and Letters I, 4). |
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While their conclusions are generally far less bleak, the authors grouped together by Cornelis A. van Minnen and Sylvia L. Hilton represent an eclectic range of topics and points of view, each exploring a significant aspect of the American frontier. The essayists are from eight countries—the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Canada, the Netherlands, and Italy; only two are from the United States. They teach North American/American or U. S. history, Literary Studies, Irish Studies, Art History and Film History. Thus, the perspectives of the authors cross borders, both geographic and disciplinary. The result is a collection of essays which gives a kaleidoscopic view—always different, usually vivid—of the American frontier and its impact on topics as varied as opening new frontiers ("Breaking into the Trans-Mississippi Frontiers: Thomas Jefferson's Expeditions to the West" and "The Special Message of Rutherford B. Hayes, 8 March 1880, and the 'American' Canal Policy"), examinations of immigration and ethnic cultures ("Myths and Legends of the Irish Pioneers in Texas" and "Cajun Louisiana: A 'French' Borderland in the Twentieth Century"), man's relation to the land ("Yeomen and Yankees across the Mason-Dixon Line: A Different Perspective on the Antebellum North/South Divide" and "New Deal, New Frontiers and Borderlands") and the arts ("Frontiers and Boundaries in Hollywood Film: The Case of The Grapes of Wrath" and "The 'New' Frontier in Real and Fictional Las Vegas"). |
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These varied points of view, incorporating elements of sociology, political science, agricultural economics and film criticism, are effectively grounded by the editors' introduction, "Frontiers and Boundaries in U. S. History," which explores varied interpretations of the frontier concept and provides a cogent and succinct treatment of frontier historians, starting with Frederick Jackson Turner and including Walter Prescott Webb, Herbert Eugene Bolton and Patricia Nelson Limerick. |
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In short, Frontiers and Boundaries in U. S. History is a cornucopia of perspectives on the American frontier and its consequences, a cornucopia infinitely varied, often colorful, and containing only one or two rotten fruits. |
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| Mary Ellen Jones
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| Wittenberg University |
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ISSN 1939-8603
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