At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British North America (Regional Perspectives on Early America)
Mr. Hinderaker and Mr. Mancall successfully challenge the negative reputation that has clung to the backcountry. They demonstrate that it was an economically vital part of colonial American society... Thanks to the authors' impressive scholarship we now understand how a place once despised as a 'backcountry' quickly became the dynamic frontier of economic and social development in the United States.(Evan HaefeliWashington Times)This short, engaging text provides a useful survey of key themes for an often-neglected region, the backcountry... Particular attention is focused on the numerous wars of the period; the book has excellent short discussions of Bacon's Rebellion, Metacom's War, the Yamasee War, and the Seven Years' War, among other conflicts. Although the idea of the 'backcountry' is by definition a European concept, the authors skillfully outline the impact of trade and war on both Native and Colonial communities.(Choice)A fine synthesis of a vastly complex subject, and students assigned this volume will benefit from the authors' successful integration of the backcountry into the broader history of English imperialism in America... Extremely informative and useful.(Michael Leroy ObergHistory: Reviews of New Books)An acutely written, meticulously researched, scholarly history which closely examines the manifold causes of conflict between Native Americans and Europeans, as well as the ordinary situations of daily life which were to significantly contribute to the American Revolution.(Midwest Book Review)Eric Hinderaker and Peter Mancall have written a concise, synthetic narrative of the backcountry from Georgia to Maine. In the process, they successfully argue for its centrality in colonial American history.(Krista CamenzindPennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography)Sophisticated but straightforward,At the Edge of Empireis an excellent introduction to the vital role that the backcountry played in colonial American history.(Kathleen DuValNew England Quarterly)This is undoubtedly the best brief synthesis available on the interactions between Native and European groups on the colonial frontier. Scholars will admire its sophistication, scope, and conceptual strength; students will appreciate its brevity and readability. A compelling story, engagingly told.(Fred Anderson, University of Colorado, Boulder)Eric Hinderaker and Peter Mancall follow the western periphery of the British empire across two hundred years of shifting terrain. Their collaboration has produced a superb new synthesis that brings clarity to the chaotic history of the colonial backcountry, mapping the collisions and collusions that occurred 'at the edge of empire,' and making clear that the evolution of the backcountry decisively shaped the legacy of colonialism in North America.(Stephen Aron, UCLA, Director of the Autry Institute for the Study of the American West)Takes a fresh approach to it subject matter... sheds light on the wider Atlantic context in which eighteenth-century British America developed... Hinderaker and Mancall describe the rapid and often violent mixing of cultures on a frontier that imperial authorities could barely control.(Timothy J. ShannonWilliam and Mary Quarterly)Eric Hinderaker and Peter C. Mancall have successfully synthesized the complex world of British backcountry resettlement in a brief, readable format.Eric Hinderaker and Peter C. Mancall(Gray H. WhaleyJournal of World History)At the Edge of Empireis undoubtedly the best available introduction to its difficult subject for scholars and students alike.(Michael ZiserEighteenth-Century Studies)Intriguing book.(Gregory Evans DowdNorth Carolina Historical Review)Hinderaker and Mancall write a compact synthesis of recent historical monographs that open the reader to the diversity of new scholarship concerning two hundred years of British colonial history.(David Curtis SkaggsJournal of Northwest Ohio History)