Frontier Cities

Encounters at the Crossroads of Empire

Jay Gitlin, Barbara Berglund, Adam Arenson, Jay Gitlin, Barbara Berglund, Adam Arenson

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780812244687
  9780812244687
• eBook ISBN:
  9780812207576
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Macau, New Orleans, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. All of these metropolitan centers were once frontier cities, urban areas irrevocably shaped by cross-cultural borderland beginnings. Spanning a wide range of periods and locations, and including stories of eighteenth-century Detroit, nineteenth-century Seattle, and twentieth-century Los Angeles, Frontier Cities recovers the history of these urban places and shows how, from the start, natives and newcomers alike shared streets, buildings, and interwoven lives. Not only do frontier cities embody the earliest matrix of the American urban experience; they also testify to the intersections of colonial, urban, western, and global history.The twelve essays in this collection paint compelling portraits of frontier cities and their inhabitants: the French traders who bypassed imperial regulations by throwing casks of brandy over the wall to Indian customers in eighteenth-century Montreal; Isaac Friedlander, San Francisco's "Grain King"; and Adrien de Pauger, who designed the Vieux Carré in New Orleans. Exploring the economic and political networks, imperial ambitions, and personal intimacies of frontier city development, this collection demonstrates that these cities followed no mythic line of settlement, nor did they move lockstep through a certain pace or pattern of evolution. An introduction puts the collection in historical context, and the epilogue ponders the future of frontier cities in the midst of contemporary globalization. With innovative concepts and a rich selection of maps and images, Frontier Cities imparts a crucial untold chapter in the construction of urban history and place.

INDEX

Abbott, Carl, 151, 154, 160, 163

Abenaki Indians, 59, 65

absolutism, royal, 51, 222 n.8

Acapulco, city of, 13, 21, 25

Acolapissa Indians, 33, 37

Africa, 7, 12, 14, 16, 42

African Americans, 28, 29, 138, 142; in Seattle, 140, 142; in slavery, 30, 34; in Tampa, 204

agriculture, 96, 97; California, 109–10, 111; environmental effects of, 118; mechanized, 116

air travel, 119

Alaska, 130, 143

Albany (N.Y.), town of, 80, 156; fur trade at, 69;

Iroquois traders and, 51, 69; Lamoureux in, 62, 64; liquor smuggling and, 51, 62, 64

Albuquerque, Afonso de, 16

Algonquian-speakers, 50, 56, 59–60, 62, 63, 75; Great Peace of Montreal and, 67–68, 69, 72; multi-ethnic and multilingual communities, 70

Alton (Ill.), town of, 154, 155

American Revolution, 39, 52, 84, 96, 231 n.17

amusement, place of, 5, 6

Anchorage (Alaska), town of, 162, 163

Anderson, John, 91

Anglicans, 96

Anglo-Americans, 87, 171, 183; British empire

and, 93; Catholicism and, 165; Indians and, 87–88, 93–95, 95; as majority, 189. See also whites

Anishinaabe language, 59

Apache Indians, 59

Appalachian Mountains, 87, 89, 92

Arapaho Indians, 132

Arrivé, Jacques, 61–62

Ashalacoa (“Long Knife”) “tribe” (Virginians), 87, 88, 92, 95, 100, 102; Indians’ view of, 101; U.S. Indian policies and, 103. See also Virginia

Atchatchakangouen (Grue [Crane]) band, 74

Atherton, Lewis, 159

Atlantic World, 30–31, 32, 35; Louisiana and New Orleans in, 39, 43, 45; migration in, 38

Audubon, John James, 190

Babis, Louis, 60

back-of-town collaborations, 33, 35, 36, 39, 40, 44, 45

Baltimore, city of, 170

barter, 153

Barth, Gunther, 126

Bates, Frederick, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Local Crossroads, Global Networks, and Frontier Cities
• I. Precedents: Imperial Plans and Commercial Ventures
• II. Urban Space and Frontier Realities In The Eighteenth Century
• III. Networks and Flows: The Frontier City In The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
• IV. Renderings: Visualizing and Reading The Frontier City
• Epilogue: Frontier Cities and the Return of Globalization
• Notes
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Acknowledgments