Research Catalog

Title

Frontier country : the politics of war in early Pennsylvania / Patrick Spero.

Author

Spero, Patrick

Publication

• Philadelphia, PA : University Of Pennsylvania Press, [2016]
• ©2016.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 343 pages : illustrations, maps; 23 cm

Summary

In Frontier Country, Patrick Spero addresses one of the most important and controversial subjects in American history: the frontier. Countering the modern conception of the American frontier as an area of expansion, Spero employs the eighteenth-century meaning of the term to show how colonists understood it as a vulnerable, militarized boundary. The Pennsylvania frontier, Spero argues, was constituted through conflicts not only between colonists and Native Americans but also among neighboring British colonies. These violent encounters created what Spero describes as a distinctive "frontier society" on the eve of the American Revolution that transformed the once-peaceful colony of Pennsylvania into a "frontier country." Spero narrates Pennsylvania's story through a sequence of formative but until now largely overlooked confrontations: an eight-year-long border war between Maryland and Pennsylvania in the 1730s; the Seven Years' War and conflicts with Native Americans in the 1750s; a series of frontier rebellions in the 1760s that rocked the colony and its governing elite; and wars Pennsylvania fought with Virginia and Connecticut in the 1770s over its western and northern borders. Deploying innovative data-mining and GIS-mapping techniques to produce a series of customized maps, he illustrates the growth and shifting locations of frontiers over time. Synthesizing the tensions between high and low politics and between eastern and western regions in Pennsylvania before the Revolution, Spero recasts the importance of frontiers to the development of colonial America and the origins of American Independence.

Series Statement

Early American Studies

Uniform Title

Early American studies.

Subjects

• United States
• Virginia
• Pennsylvania
• Maryland
• Connecticut
• Insurgency
• United States > History > French and Indian War, 1754-1763
• Virginia > Boundaries > 18th century
• French and Indian War (United States : 1754-1763)
• Boundaries
• 1600-1799
• Pennsylvania > Boundaries > 18th century
• History
• Pennsylvania > History > Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
• Maryland > Boundaries > 18th century
• Connecticut > Boundaries > 18th century
• Insurgency > Pennsylvania > 18th century

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Language (note)

• Text in English.

Contents

Introduction. Early American frontiers -- Chapter 1. The hidden flaw -- Chapter 2. Growth arrives -- Chapter 3. The first frontier crisis -- Chapter 4. Pennsylvania's apogee -- Chapter 5. Becoming a frontier community -- Chapter 6. Frontier politics -- Chapter 7. The permanent frontier -- Chapter 8. The British Empire's frontier crisis -- Chapter 9. Independent frontier -- Chapter 10. Creating a frontier government -- Conclusion. Frontiers in a new nation -- Coda. frontiers: meanings, controversies and new evidence.

Call Number

JFE 16-13897

ISBN

• 0812248619
• 9780812248616

OCLC

945028583

Author

Spero, Patrick, author.

Title

Frontier country : the politics of war in early Pennsylvania / Patrick Spero.

Publisher

Philadelphia, PA : University Of Pennsylvania Press, [2016]

Copyright Date

©2016.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Early American Studies

Early American studies.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Language

Text in English.

Chronological Term

1600-1799

Research Call Number

JFE 16-13897