Frontier Cities: Encounters at the Crossroads of Empire

Abstract

Frontier Cities revisits, reconsiders, and revitalizes the concept of a North American urban frontier. In The Urban Frontier: Pioneer Life in Early Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, and St. Louis (1959), Richard C. Wade turned frontier history and urban history inside out, arguing persuasively that early western cities were the “spearheads of the frontier,” with histories that were just as important as those of much-studied New York or Boston. His analysis and evidence, which contradicted the approaches of Frederick Jackson Turner and Wade's Harvard University professor Arthur Schlesinger, inspired a generation of younger historians, including this reviewer (who even cribbed from Wade's title for one book). With ample caveats and modifications, the contributors to the present volume still find the concept of a frontier city appealing. They may interrogate the precise definition and the appropriate use of frontier, borderland, and middle ground, but they also offer insightful discussions of frontier cities outside North America (a scene-setting look at Goa, Manila, and Macau) and inside the continent (New Orleans, Montreal, Detroit, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Seattle). The editors neatly conclude by briefly examining how their hometowns of New Haven, Tampa, and El Paso can be viewed as frontier cities.