Frontier cities : encounters at the crossroads of empire / edited by Jay Gitlin, Barbara Berglund, and Adam Arenson.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Gitlin, Jay.

Sokolov, Barbara Berglund.

Arenson, Adam, 1978-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Frontier and pioneer life--North America.

Frontier and pioneer life.

City and town life--North America--History.

City and town life.

Borderlands--North America--History.

Borderlands.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (276 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Introduction: Local Crossroads, Global Networks, and Frontier Cities / Gitlin, Jay / Berglund, Barbara / Arenson, Adam

I. Precedents: Imperial Plans and Commercial Ventures

1. The European Frontier City in Early Modern Asia: Goa, Macau, and Manila / Gallay, Alan

2. Colonial Projects and Frontier Practices: The First Century of New Orleans History / Usner, Daniel H.

II. Uran Sp ace and Frontier Realities in the Eighteenth Century

3. Insinuating Empire: Indians, Smugglers, and the Imperial Geography of Eighteenth-Century Montreal / Rushforth, Brett

4. On the Edge of the West: The Roots and Routes of Detroit's Urban Eighteenth Century / Marrero, Karen

5. People of the Pen, People of the Sword: Pittsburgh in 1774 / Gilman, Carolyn

III. Networks and Flows: The Frontier City in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

6. Grain Kings, Rubber Dreams, and Stock Exchanges: How Transportation and Communication Changed Frontier Cities / West, Elliott

7. Frontier Ghosts Along the Urban Pacific Slope / Klingle, Matthew

IV. Renderings: Visualizing and Reading the Frontier City

8. Locating the Frontier City in Time and Space: Documenting a Passing Phenomenon / Mahoney, Timothy R.

9. Mapping the Urban Frontier and Losing Frontier Cities / Kastor, Peter J.

10. Private Libraries and Global Worlds: Books and Print Culture in Colonial St. Louis / Hoover, John Neal

Epilogue: Frontier Cities and the Return of Globalization / Gitlin, Jay / Berglund, Barbara / Arenson, Adam

Notes

List of Contributors

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780812207576

0812207572

OCLC:

859160665