Frontier Cities: Encounters at the Crossroads of Empire

by Adam Arenson (Editor), Jay Gitlin (Editor), Barbara Berglund (Editor)

Macau, New Orleans, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. All of these metropolitan centers were once frontier cities, urban areas irrevocably shaped by cross-cultural borderland beginnings. Spanning a wide range of periods and locations, and including stories of eighteenth-century Detroit, nineteenth-century Seattle, and twentieth-century Los Angeles, Frontier Cities recovers the history of these urban places and shows how, from the start, natives and newcomers alike shared streets, buildings, and interwoven lives. Not only do frontier cities embody the earliest matrix of the American urban experience; they also testify to the intersections of colonial, urban, western, and global history.

The twelve essays in this collection paint compelling portraits of frontier cities and their inhabitants: the French traders who bypassed imperial regulations by throwing casks of brandy over the wall to Indian customers in eighteenth-century Montreal; Isaac Friedlander, San Francisco's "Grain King"; and Adrien de Pauger, who designed the Vieux Carre in New Orleans. Exploring the economic and political networks, imperial ambitions, and personal intimacies of frontier city development, this collection demonstrates that these cities followed no mythic line of settlement, nor did they move lockstep through a certain pace or pattern of evolution. An introduction puts the collection in historical context, and the epilogue ponders the future of frontier cities in the midst of contemporary globalization. With innovative concepts and a rich selection of maps and images, Frontier Cities imparts a crucial untold chapter in the construction of urban history and place.

280 pages, Hardcover

First published December 21, 2012

About the author

Adam Arenson is an associate professor of history and director of the urban studies program at Manhattan College.

He holds degrees from Harvard and Yale, and he previously taught at the University of Texas at El Paso. He researches, writes, and teaches the history and memory of North America, concentrating on the cultural and political history of slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction, as well as the development of cities--from California to the Yukon Territory, from the province of Ontario to St. Louis to El Paso.

He writes accessible history including on the pages of The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and he coordinates the Writing History Seminar in New York City, where he lives.

https://manhattan.edu/campus-director...

Reviews

[Ellen White · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting look at the beginning of the metropolitan cities from the 18-19-20 centuries. How each withe diversity of culture, people walked side by side in history. Interesting and well done. Enjoyed the narration. Given audio for my voluntary review

[Mills College Library]

970 F9353 2013