At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British North America

Regional Perspectives on Early America

by Eric Hinderaker, Peter C. Mancall

During the course of the seventeenth century, Europeans and Native Americans came together on the western edge of England's North American empire for a variety of purposes, from trading goods and information to making alliances and war. This blurred and constantly shifting frontier region, known as the backcountry, existed just beyond England's imperial reach on the North American mainland. It became an area of opportunity, intrigue, and conflict for the diverse peoples who lived there.

In At the Edge of Empire, Eric Hinderaker and Peter C. Mancall describe the nature of the complex interactions among these interests, examining colorful and sometimes gripping instances of familiarity and uneasiness, acceptance and animosity, and cooperation and conflict, from individual encounters to such vast undertakings as the Seven Years' War. Over time, the European settlers who established farms and trading posts in the backcountry displaced the region's Native inhabitants. Warfare and disease each took a horrifying toll across Indian country, making it easier for immigrants to establish themselves on lands once peopled only by Native Americans. Eventually, these pioneers established economically, culturally, and politically self-sufficient communities that increasingly resented London's claims of sovereignty. As Hinderaker and Mancall show, these resentments helped to shape the ideals that guided the colonists during the American Revolution.

The first book in a new Johns Hopkins series, Regional Perspectives on Early America, At the Edge of Empire explores one of British America's most intriguing regions, both widening and deepening our understanding of North America's colonial experience.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published April 8, 2003

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brief introduction to the backcountry in colonial America, looking at similar and different experiences in three regions: the North, the Ohio Valley, and the South.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

When an American thinks of the frontier of history, modern day Ohio, Kentucky and the Appalachian mountains are hardly the first thing that comes to mind. When a British subject thinks of the effects of the nation's past in Ireland or Scotland, dealings with Cherokees or Mohawks hardly come to mind. But Professor's Hinderaker and Mancall make the case in their comprehensive yet concise story about the edge of the first British Empire and the first American frontier.

The back country of America is often approached from a modern, American standpoint, from the perspective of the early Americans, like Daniel Boone. This book makes the case that the American back country should be instead be likened to the English experience in Ireland and Scotland in the 16th century, rather than being likened to the American experience in western and Rocky Mountain states in the 19th century. Though to a large degree, it is impossible to understand the later American historical experience of the Wild west without understanding the wild mid-west.

This book can be understood well from three perspectives: the relationship of the settlers along the American frontier to the native Americans, the relationship of the British Empire to the settlers, the relationship between Britain and France in their longstanding struggle for supremacy. As the 170 years or so of the first British Empire in North America rolled on, the conflicting attitudes, alliances and interests of all the parties involved made the time period one of constant change with at times brutal results in economic deprivation and war. What emerged was perhaps the most unlikely event possible, a continental republic where authority flowed from the bottom up, as much as it has at any point in human history.

The authors do a fine job of showing just why the interior of North America was so valuable to all parties involved, and why confusion and misunderstanding often carried the day. The Pennsylvania backcountry is a prime example. Founded by Quaker businessman and pacifists, ruling from far away Philadelphia, they simply had no framework for understanding the disputes, claims and issues involved among the German and Scotch Irish settlers in today's central Pennsylvania. And these decades of misunderstandings often led to unnecessary conflict among the natives, settlers and rising disputes with the ruling class.

The familiar events leading to the American Revolution are told from the perspective that disputes in the backcountry largely led to the conflict that founded the United States. Even given several decades to solve the situation politically, the British Empire could never effectively design systems to deal with trade, backcountry political representation and native disputes. The worldview of the day and the distant London government could never quite understand just how complex a situation they were dealing with. How the early American Republic was able to solve the issues that were raised by the backcountry disputes with London so quickly, such as the removal of nearly every colonial capital from the coast to the interior and the means of creating new interior territories, is told well, with the only losers being the native tribes who were seen as a problem to be pushed away until later by the British and a problem to be swept away by the backcountry settlers.

This is a short book, worth a reader's time, as it shows just how dramatic and incredible the changes were in eastern North America during the 16th and 17th century. Things that began small: land speculation, Indian conflict, individual settlement apart from an often disinterested justice system grew up into something completely unexpected. Few of the actors of the day escape unscathed from this 170 year time period, and the misunderstandings of the time period often met their end in civil war in the American Revolution.

In about a 180 pages, the authors map out a pattern of settlement by Europeans, unlike anything that had happened before, one that was unruly, controlled from the ground up and led to the modern world. This book is highly recommended.

[Bill Draper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Because I love history and have studied some of the backcountry development, I was amazed at the easy manner in which the authors told 160 years of native and settler history. That is until I reached the end of the chronological story, the 1770s and Dunmore's War. What should have been a detailed turning point and an interesting story was brushed over with quick opinion. It's true that many of the events throughout history were abbreviated, but few were as important as this. It was unfortunate for the reader.

From their footnotes, the authors didn't seem to depend on much contemporary evidence, and the facts they present in the case of Dunmore's War are somewhat uninformed. For example, in 1773 and 74, few of the Shawnee and Mingo were peaceful. Multiple raids frightened the settlers, not John Connolly's rumors (which were based on traders being killed or forced out of native towns, settlers unable to go to Kentucky due to raids, surveyors being robbed and killed). Connolly created as much havoc as he could, but settlers were already massing to kill natives before he or Dunmore's ever got involved. And a number of important natives and colonists were never mentioned.

The last chapters peter out and seem to simply add facts and color that might have been edited out of previous chapters to increase readability. I would have liked to have read more detail about the very early treatment of natives around Jamestown and in the Northern Neck of Virginia. And I'm surprised they didn't include the creation of counties as instigators of movement west.

The 1770s was certainly not the end of backcountry development, but it marked the end of the colonial period, so it's an obvious stopping point. Edge of Empires was a good overview of how the colonies expanded.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short book provides an easy-to-read overview of the political and economic factors affecting settlement at the ever-moving outer edge of British North America. Although it covers the entire pre-Revolutionary period, about half the book focuses on the years 1750-1775. Social/cultural aspects of life in the backcountry get little attention, so if you're looking for a book about what life was like for backcountry settlers - this isn't it.