Frontier
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- This article is about the political and geographic term. For the computer game, see Frontier (computer game). For the games developer, see Frontier Developments. For the Airline, see Frontier Airlines. For the theory about the meaning of the American frontier see Frontier Thesis.
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United States
In the United States, the frontier was the term applied to the zone of unsettled land outside the region of existing settlements of Americans. In a broad sense, the notion of the frontier was the edge of the settled country where unlimited free land was available, as was unlimited hunting.
Throughout the history of both the United States and its northern neighbor Canada, the expansion of settlement was largely from the east to the west, and thus the frontier is often identified with western areas of both countries. On the Pacific Coast, settlement moved eastward. In New England, it moved north.
'Frontier' was borrowed into English from French in the 15th century with the meaning "borderland," the region of a country that fronts on another country (see also marches). The use of frontier to mean "a region at the edge of a settled area" is a special North American development. (Compare the Australian "outback".)
Colonial frontier
See also: Colonial America, British colonization of the Americas, French colonization of the Americas
In the earliest days of European settlement of the Atlantic coast, the frontier was essentially any part of the forested interior of the continent beyond the fringe of existing settlements along the coast and the great rivers, such as the St. Lawrence, Connecticut, Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna River and James.
English, French, Spanish and Dutch patterns of expansion and settlement were generally quite different. With some exceptions, notably in Acadia, French expansion into the continent in the colonial era was largely by fur traders, who often lived among the Native Americans with whom they did business. Such traders moved widely through the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watershed, as far as the Rocky Mountains. Actual French settlement in these areas, however, was limited to small villages on the lower Mississippi and in the Illinois Country. Likewise, early Dutch expansion in the Hudson was intended largely for commercial purposes. The immigrants who arrived at the New Amsterdam settlement seeking to settle on the land were tolerated by colonial officials as necessary to provide food and other services for the trading operations. These patterns developed because both the French and Dutch colonies relied mainly on the fur trade, which only needed small numbers of people but large amounts of wilderness and cooperation from the natives.
In contrast, the English agriculture based colonies generally pursued a more systematic policy of widespread settlement of the New World for cultivation and exploitation of the land, a practice that required the extension of European property rights to the new continent. The typical English settlements were quite compact and small--under a square mile. Conflict with the Native Americans arose out of political issues: who will rule. Early frontier areas east of the Appalachian Mountains included the Connecticut river valley.
By the middle of the 18th century, some colonists began to expand settlement into Trans-Appalachia areas, such as the Ohio Country.
This pressure of settlement west of the Appalachians was a large cause of the French and Indian Wars in the middle 18th century. The result of the war was a complete victory for the British, who absorbed the claim to the French territory west of the Appalachians to the Mississippi River. Despite this victory, the British Crown, in part to preserve good relations with the Native Americans of the region, sought to keep the Trans-Appalachian frontier closed with the Proclamation of 1763, which defined a boundary line of allowed settlement along the Appalachians.
Despite the policy of the Crown, colonists began encroaching across the Appalachians into areas such the Ohio Country and the New River Valley. The attempts of the Crown to forbid such settlement is regarded by historians as a significant cause of the American Revolution in the following decade.
The U.S. frontier
Following the victory of the United States in the American Revolutionary War and the signing Treaty of Paris in 1783, the United States gained formal, if not actual, control of the British lands west of the Appalachians. The prohibition against settlement was rendered moot and the lands of the Ohio Country and in western Virginia (present-day West Virginia and Kentucky) were immediately available for new settlement. Some areas, such as the Virginia Military District and the Connecticut Western Reserve (both in the Ohio Country), were used by the states as rewards to veterans of the war. The issue of how to formally include these new frontier areas into the nation was an important issue in the early Congresses and was essentially resolved by the Northwest Ordinance (1787). The Southwest Territory saw a similar pattern of settlement pressure.
For the next century, the expansion of the nation into these areas, as well as the subsequently acquired Louisiana Purchase, Oregon Country, and Mexican Cession, would absorb much of the energy of the nation and largely define its politics and character, in particular its relations with Native Americans. The question of whether the American frontier would become "slave" or "free" was a spark of the American Civil War.
In the 19th century, the settlement of the west became progressively organized through acts of the federal government, most notably the Homestead Act of 1862. In 1890, the frontier line was no more, though the frontier still existed in disconnected locations. Maps showing the frontier used the a line beyond which the population was under 2 persons per square mile).
The popular culture impact of the frontier was enormous, in dime novels, Wild West shows, and, after 1910, Western movies set on the frontier.
The American frontier was generally the most Western edge of settlement and typically more democratic and free-spirited in nature than the East because of its lack of social and political institutions. The idea that the frontier provided the core defining quality of the United States was elaborated by the great historian Frederick Jackson Turner, who built his Frontier Thesis in 1893 around this notion.
Recently Drs. Frank and Deborah Popper, originators of the Buffalo Commons proposal, have pointed out that several hundred counties of the American West still have fewer than 6 persons per square mile - the density standard Turner used to declare the Frontier "closed". Many have fewer than 2 persons per square mile.
Canadian frontier
The pattern of settlement of the Canadian frontier was quite different from in the United States. The settlement began considerably later, with 1896 generally considered the start date of significant settlement on the Prairies. This was after the best land had been taken in the United States and the Canadian frontier became known as the Last Best West. This delay, and the different political culture, helped make the Canadian frontier a very different place.
Before settlers began to arrive, the North West Mounted Police was dispatched to the region. When settlers began to arrive, a system of law and order was already in place and the lawlessness and anarchy for which the American "Wild West" was famed did not occur in Canada. Before settlers arrived, the federal government also sent teams of negotiators to meet with the Native peoples of the region. In a series of treaties, the basis for peaceful relations was established and the long wars with the Natives that occurred in the United States largely did not spread to Canada.
Note, however, that the Canadian political thinker Charles Blattberg has argued that such events ought to be seen as part of a process in which Canadians advanced a "border"-- as distinct from a "frontier"--from east to west. According to Blattberg, a border assumes a significantly sharper contrast between the civilized and the uncivilized since, unlike with a frontier process, the civilizing force is not supposed to be shaped by that which it is civilizing. Blattberg criticizes both the frontier and border "civilizing" processes.
Sea-to-sea grants
When the British divided their North American land into colonies, they did not place western boundaries on most of them, including Virginia and New York. Theoretically, the provinces extended to the Pacific Ocean. In practice, the western boundary was the peaks of the Appalachian Mountains, which divided French from British territories.
After the French and Indian War, Britain received the French territory East of the Mississippi river, but through the Proclamation of 1763, the new territory was closed to settlers, in effect returning to the old colonial boundaries. After the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution, the territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River returned to the newly independent states. Many claims overlapped, based on the original sea-to-sea grants. The Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution were silent on the matter (art. 4, sec. 3 clause 2, in pertinent part "nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims ... of any particular state"), but states were encouraged to resolve their conflict peacefully and to turn over "excess" western territory (over which they exercised no de facto control, since it was occupied by Indians) to the federal government, which in 1787 organized it into the Northwest Territory through the Northwest Ordinance.
Extensions of the "frontier" concept
Some sense of "frontier" has also been extended to other areas of achievement and conquest. President John F. Kennedy, for example, referred to his own legislative agenda as a "New Frontier." The television show Star Trek famously calls space the "final frontier." Others (e.g., Aldo Leopold, Gary Snyder, Stewart Brand) have seen a sort of frontier in the possibilities presented to modern people challenged to re-integrate themselves sustainably in a post-industrial circumstance here on Earth - complete with advanced technology.
Europe
In the European Union, the frontier is a term used to describe the region beyond the expanding borders of the European Union. The European Union has designated the countries surrounding it as part of the European Neighbourhood. This is a region of primarily less-developed countries, many of which aspire to become part of the European Union itself. Current applicants include Turkey and Croatia. Ukraine has also set itself the primary task of eventually joining the Union, as have many small countries in the Balkans and South Caucasus. Romania and Bulgaria, both EU accession states, are due to become part of Europe in 2007. With all or most European states as members, the frontier may eventually become a more permanent border.
See also
References
- The Frontier In American History by Frederick Jackson Turner
- Billington, Ray Allen. America's Frontier Heritage (1984), an analysis of the frontier experience in relation to social sciences and historiography
- Billington, Ray Allen. Westward expansion;: A history of the American frontier (1952 and later edition)
- Billington, Ray Allen. Land of Savagery / Land of Promise: The European Image of the American Frontier in the Nineteenth Century (1981)
- Blattberg, Charles. Shall We Dance? A Patriotic Politics for Canada (2003), ch. 3
- Hine, Robert V. and John Mack Faragher. The American West: A New Interpretive History (2000)
- Howard R. Lamar, ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American West (1998)
- Milner, Clyde A., II ed. Major Problems in the History of the American West 2nd ed (1997), primary sources and essays by scholars
- Paxson, Frederic, History of the American Frontier, 1763-1893 (1924)