Jay Gitlin

Under an open sky : rethinking America's Western past

The history of the American West is being transformed by exciting new ideas, new questions, new scholarship. For many years this field was dominated by popular images of the lone cowboy and the savage Indian, and by Frederick Jackson Turners concept of the frontier as a steadily advancing source of democracy and social renewal. But now historians and even the merchants of popular culture are reshaping our views of the frontier and the West by taking up a rich array of new subjects, including the stories of diverse peoples as well as the history of the land itself. A new generation of scholars is reformulating the broader questions also: What was the significance of the frontier in American history? What are the bases of western identity? What themes connect the twentieth-century West to its more distant past? The transformation of western history continues to be an open-ended, turbulent process. The original essays in this volume are reports from the frontier of change. In their diverging assumptions and conclusions, they reflect the vitality of this field. They succeed when they make the case for new questions and suggest possible answers. They advocate no single agenda. But taken together they well represent the passion and high craft with which scholars are creating a new western history.

Frontier Cities: Encounters at the Crossroads of Empire

Introduction: Local Crossroads, Global Networks, and Frontier Cities Jay Gitlin, Barbara -Berglund, and Adam Arenson I. PRECEDENTS: IMPERIAL PLANS AND COMMERCIAL VENTURES Chapter 1. The European Frontier City in Early Modern Asia: Goa, Macau, and Manila -Alan Gallay Chapter 2. Colonial Projects and Frontier Practices: The First Century of New Orleans History -Daniel H. Usner, Jr. II. URBAN SPACE AND FRONTIER REALITIES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Chapter 3. Insinuating Empire: Indians, Smugglers, and the Imperial Geography of Eighteenth-Century Montreal -Brett Rushforth Chapter 4. On the Edge of the West: The Roots and Routes of Detroits Urban Eighteenth Century -Karen Marrero Chapter 5. People of the Pen, People of the Sword: Pittsburgh in 1774 -Carolyn Gilman III. NETWORKS AND FLOWS: THE FRONTIER CITY IN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES Chapter 6. Grain Kings, Rubber Dreams, and Stock Exchanges: How Transportation and Communication Changed Frontier Cities -Elliott West Chapter 7. Frontier Ghosts Along the Urban Pacific Slope -Matthew Klingle IV. RENDERINGS: VISUALIZING AND READING THE FRONTIER CITY Chapter 8. Locating the Frontier City in Time and Space: Documenting a Passing Phenomenon -Timothy R. Mahoney Chapter 9. Mapping the Urban Frontier and Losing Frontier Cities -Peter J. Kastor Chapter 10. Private Libraries and Global Worlds: Books and Print Culture in Colonial St. Louis -John Hoover Epilogue. Frontier Cities and the Return of Globalization -Jay Gitlin, Barbara Berglund, and Adam Arenson Notes List of Contributors Index Acknowledgments