The Frontier in History: North America and Southern Africa Compared ed. by Howard Lamar, Leonard Thompson

Abstract

158 Western American Literature While these essays present intelligent readings of Stegner’s work, they also demonstrate the energy and creativity in scholarship on western literature. MELODY GRAULICH University of New Hampshire The Frontier in History: North America and Southern Africa Compared. Edited by Howard Lamar and Leonard Thompson. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981. xii + 360 pages, maps and index. Hardcover, $37.50; paper, $7.95.) While comparative frontier history is a relatively new field, the editors of this collection are as experienced in it as any, having jointly conducted gradu­ ate seminars on the subject at Yale University since 1971. This work grows out of their experience and is the product of a conference of international scholars which they convened at Seven Springs Center, Mount Cisco, New York, in 1979. The editors define the frontier as a “zone of interpenetration between two previously distinct societies,” one indigenous, or well established, the other intrusive (p. 7). They are concerned about the impact of that interaction on both societies. They recognize that too few historians are knowledgeable enough to analyze two frontiers, so they have paired up historians of each to treat four different factors: “Phases and Processes,” “Politics and the Fron­ tier,” “Social and Economic Processes,” and “Christianity on the Frontier.” The editors acknowledge the tentative nature of their efforts. They have limited the North American experience primarily to the United States, and they limit their study to only the four themes, not a comprehensive comparison of the two regions. As with any multi-authored work, the character of presen­ tation varies widely, but generally it succeeds. The most truly comparative part of the volume is the editors’ second chapter, in which they consider the broad historical and demographic distinc­ tions between the two frontiers and make direct comparisons of their authors’ contributions. In the first pair of chapters, treating “Phases and Processes,” is a painfully abstract theoretical study by Robert F. Berkhofer, in which he seeks to define his terms to escape from the ethnocentrism introduced to the subject by Frederick Jackson Turner. Hermann Giliomee, treating the same general subject, embodies his ideas in concrete examples, concluding that the South African Frontier differed from North America in three substantial ways: North America included the ferment ofa moving frontier along with the introduction of industrial development from its inceptions, whereas South Africa escaped the industrial impact until 1870. Secondly, South Africa, after its initial con­ tact with the Khoi, was never able to expel or eliminate the indigenous people. Rather, it had to colonize both people and land. Thirdly, politically the South Africans combined European as well as American concepts of the frontier; Reviews 159 viz., a boundary between antagonistic nations, as well as a moving line of settlement of the intrusive society. Some of his themes recur later in the book. The second matched set of essays deals with “Politics and the Frontier.” Clyde A. Milner II contrasts the experience of a localized case study, the Virginian frontier with the Powhatan in the seventeenth century, with the far reaching imperialism of the French fur trade frontier. He explores his issues through a sequence of stages from the “survival frontier” to the “conquest frontier” to the last stage of displacement. Much of the specific detail con­ tributed by Milner would have given meaning to Berkhofer’s theorizing. Christopher Saunders explains that only the early Khoi frontier of South Africa provides a close analogy to the American experience. Thereafter, the African communities proved too numerous and culturally diverse to be as vulnerable to European encroachment as were Indian societies of America. He demonstrates that ethnicity was not the sole determinant of the political process in South Africa, noting that many issues created complex relationships with whites and Africans on both sides of single issues, not simply a blackwhite confrontation. The third group of chapters treats social and economic processes. Ramsay Cook asserts that the Indians readily accommodated to the economics of the fur trade, but had difficulty accommodating to the European conceptions of land holding and industrial society. He observes that the trade preceded the direct intrusion of Europeans. He notes that the Indians were not merely passive...