Settling the Frontier: Urban Development in America's Borderlands, 1600–1830

Abstract

The study of urban development, loosely defined, along the American frontier has long provided a fruitful avenue of inquiry for historians of early America. Scholars have sought to assess the role that urban centers played in frontier settlement and development, beginning with Richard C. Wade's The Urban Frontier (1959), which delineated the importance of urban areas in providing political, economic, and military stability during the early settlement of the Ohio River valley and the upper Mississippi River valley. Subsequent works, such as Kenneth Lewis's The American Frontier (1984) or Richard White's influential The Middle Ground (1991), built upon elements of Wade's thesis to demonstrate the importance of urban centers in frontier development. However, in Joseph P. Alessi's estimation, The Urban Frontier and its successors (except perhaps for White's work) suffer from a common flaw: they undervalue or ignore the vital role played by Native American peoples in the creation, development,...