In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37.2 (2006) 295-296


Reviewed by
David Hancock
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
British Atlantic, American Frontier: Spaces of Power in Early Modern British America. By Stephen J. Hornsby (Hanover, University Press of New England, 2005) 307 pp. $60.00 cloth $29.95 paper

Drawing upon an impressive array of historical sources, Hornsby provides a thoughtful synthetical overview of the evolution of Atlantic-facing British America. In British Atlantic, American Frontier, he offers "a geographical reconceptualization of early modern North America" before 1480 and 1583 (1). He focuses on the period from the founding of Jamestown to Independence and on Anglo-America.

A brief introduction frames six substantive chapters. Hornsby emphasizes the merits and demerits of the two opposing interpretations—Turner's frontier thesis and Innis' staples thesis. 1 In an interpretative twist, Hornsby combines the two approaches, arguing that "early modern British America was divided into two principal kinds of spaces": (1) "an oceanically oriented periphery or marine empire comprised of Newfoundland, the West Indies, and Hudson Bay," which he confusingly calls "the British Atlantic," and (2) "a territorially oriented periphery or settler empire that extended along the eastern seaboard of North America from Maine to Georgia," to which he refers as "the American Frontier." He also adds an intermediate space comprising "the continental staples and port towns along the eastern seaboard that had links to both the continental interior and the world of Atlantic trade" (5). This space provided "connection, articulation, and friction between the larger oceanic and continental spaces" (6).

Chapter 1 summarizes the slow, often costly expansion of the English into the increasingly important Atlantic marketplace and the eventual establishment of a viable commercial fishery in Newfoundland, a plantation colony in Virginia, and a religious community in Massachusetts. The settlement and development processes at work, Hornsby avers, "would define the spaces of English America" for the succeeding 175 years. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 examine the three key regions—Atlantic staple regions producing fish, sugar, and skins; continental staple regions producing tobacco and rice; and the intermediary "agricultural frontiers." The British Atlantic region, for instance, "formed islands of settlement [End Page 295] . . . on the western edge" of the ocean. Within their littoral spaces, they had much in common. "A particularly attenuated pattern of settlement emerged" (69); "settlements were functional, utilitarian work places . . . marked by relatively small, racially distinct, and unbalanced populations" (69, 70). In contrast to the North American agricultural empire he sketches in later chapters, "this mercantile empire of the Atlantic was capital intensive, hierarchical, and familiar" and "the oceanic frontier was the preserve of mercantile capital" (71). These "were spaces dominated by metropolitan authority" (72).

In contrast, the "[a]lmost limitless land, immense agricultural opportunities, and scarcity of labor" of the continental staple regions of New England, the Chesapeake, and South Carolina frustrated "tight metropolitan control over staple production" of cod, tobacco, and rice. According to Chapter 3, "[a] continental staple region gradually formed occupying an intermediate position between the trade circuits of the Atlantic and the resources of the continental interior" (73). Chapter 4 argues that the agricultural frontiers of New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the southern backcountry, "offering immense opportunity to immigrant Europeans and generations of Americans, would help turn the seaboard colonies away from the Atlantic toward the interior of North America." Ultimately, the westward turn would "set up clashes first with the native peoples and then with the French and the British, and contribute powerfully to the breakup of colonial British America" (126).

This reconceptualization is intriguing, yet its explanatory power is unclear. Does it explain why the thirteen colonies rebelled whereas the other American dependencies remained loyal? Not exactly, for certain similarities among the different regions would have worked against divergence. Does it illuminate the uncomfortable stance that men of the early republic took vis-à-vis the rest of the world? Perhaps so. It certainly confirms the highly integrated and porous nature of the world before 1815, and not just that of coastal communities...

pdf

Share