Introduction: Ruminations on the “F” and “B” Words

Abstract

Abstract Over the past two decades, historians studying the American West have embraced the label “borderlands” as a means of distinguishing their work from the triumphalism associated with Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis. Historians of early America have made a similar transition, although the term “frontier” is still very much in use among those working in the mid-Atlantic region. The articles in this special issue of Pennsylvania History illustrate how the themes of borderlands history have found their way into studies of eighteenth-century Pennsylvania, even if the term itself has not gained wide currency there.