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  • America’s Geographic Revolution
  • Paul B. Moyer (bio)
James D. Drake. The Nation’s Nature: How Continental Presumptions Gave Rise to the United States of America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011. xii + 402 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $39.50.

In The Nation’s Nature, James Drake examines the sources of American national identity, the origins of the American Revolution, and the birth of the United States through the lens of geographic ideas and imagination. Drake’s central argument is that “metageography”—the deeply rooted, implicit spatial models through which people make sense of the world around them—is critical to understanding the emergence of the United States. In particular, he asserts that the geographic construct of the continent that separated the globe’s land-masses into seemingly “natural” units provided the intellectual foundations for American nationhood. He contends that “during the formative years of the United States, continental presumptions colored political views, permeated political rhetoric, and gave shape to political action” (p. 3). The primary presumption Drake explores is that North America was a “discrete entity with an underlying coherence and unity” (p. 2) that was destined to be a nation inhabited by British colonists and their descendants. He asserts that this idea was a vital intellectual underpinning of American independence and identity. Drake contends that geographic concepts had real-world political consequences because contemporaries “believed in a fundamental connection between geography and politics” (p. 2) and used their geographic understandings to guide their political and diplomatic goals. In sum, The Nation’s Nature contributes to the discussion of the foundations of nationalism, breaks new ground in the study of the social construction of space, and takes a fresh look at old questions concerning the origins and outcomes of the American Revolution.

Drake takes a chronological approach to his study, which he divides into two parts. The first explores the rise and impact of continental metageography from the late seventeenth century to the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War. Chapter one charts the evolution of geographic discourse, tracing how the concept of the continent gained intellectual momentum. Drake demonstrates how this concept shaped perceptions of North America—how intellectuals increasingly described it as a coherent, united, and permeable landmass. Drake [End Page 544] also makes the point that these geographic musings were politically relevant since Enlightenment-inspired thinkers asserted that politics and other social institutions functioned best when they rested on the natural law of geography. Chapter two demonstrates how this geographic discourse translated into political and diplomatic action. It focuses on imperial competition over North America during the eighteenth century, culminating in the Seven Years’ War. The chapter places Britain’s ultimate defeat of France in the battle for the continent in the context of geographic discourse. Britain’s victory enhanced the idea that it was fated to exert unified control over a unified continent and that British subjects were naturally suited to their North American home. The third chapter embraces the tumultuous years between the end of the Seven Years’ War and the start of the Revolutionary War. Drake argues that continentalism had an important impact on the imperial crisis. American colonists increasingly saw themselves, not the British Empire, as the rightful holders of North America, and they believed that the manifest logic of geography meant that North America was rightfully destined to stand, not as part of an empire, but as a separate nation. In this sense, metageography motivated and justified American independence.

The second part traces the story of how geographic conceptions shaped America through the Revolution and up to the ratification of the Constitution. Chapter four contends that during the years when the colonies made the leap from protest to independence (1774–76), “the perception that the continent was ideal for a political community turned into the prescription for one’s establishment” (p. 11). In other words, deeply rooted ideas concerning geography helped to push the colonies towards envisioning themselves as a separate nation and acting upon that belief. Drake turns in chapter five to consider how metageography intersected with the Revolutionary War. He asserts that Americans saw the conflict as a bid to save the legacy of the Seven Years’ War: the...

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