The Power of Periphery: Political Agency and National Identity in North American Frontiers, 1867–1914

ABSTRACT

Contrary to popular perception, local residents in the western frontiers of Canada and the United States in the late 19th century frequently possessed a large degree of agency and leverage vis-à-vis their respective national cores. Far from being the obedient periphery, frontier communities and their political leaders were able to use their profession of loyalty to the national identity to win concessions and secure autonomy from national governments and, when needed, beneficial intervention from them to support the interests of local residents.

KEYWORDS:

• Frontier
• Western settlement
• national identity
• core/periphery

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the enormously helpful professionals at Library and Archives Canada for their assistance and insights during this project. I also wish to express my profound gratitude to Dr. Rebecca Mancuso of Bowling Green State University, without whose mentorship my career would have been stillborn.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

No funding to report

Notes

1. In American historiography, Webb (1931), DeVoto (1953), Robbins (1986, 1994), and White (1991) formed the foundation of the “plundered province‟ theory. In Canadian scholarship, the prominent theorists include Innis (1962), Morton (1950, 1972), Careless (1989), and Fowke (1957). See also Janigan (2013).

2. The case of Congressman James Ashley of Ohio, who served briefly as Governor of the Montana Territory (1869–70), is particularly illustrative of this tendency. Ashley (1824–96), a Radical Republican, was so universally disliked for his arrogant style of governance that he was recalled by President U.S. Grant, a fellow Republican, after only a few months. See Smith (2008, 66).

3. The American territorial system was founded upon the premise of establishing state institutions as needed by the settler populace. The actual settlement of new territories was to be done by common citizens at their discretion, as opposed to a formal state program of settlement. See Balogh (2009), Eblen (1968), Pomeroy (1947), and Nugent (2008).

4. Specifically, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided the template for the bulk of frontier settlement.

5. Not all classical or even medieval empires were free from the dictates of popular will. For example, the Roman Republic chose to engage in wars of conquest, most famously against Carthage, only after mobilizing popular sentiment toward that cause. However, it was frequently the case of the state leading the populace, and not the reverse, that characterized policymaking in past empires. See Crawford (1993, 166).

6. “Identity,” in this context, does not refer to specific policy or set of beliefs, but rather the central characteristics that define a member of an empire. Instead of an “ism,” national identity serves as the outer cultural boundary between those who are members of (and thus protected by) the state and the “others,” who fall outside the ideological markers. See Colás (2007) and Benton (2002).

7. See Pierce (1885); Memorial of the Dakota Legislative Assembly (1867); Gaff and Gaff (1994, 244). In many instances, officials decried the living conditions on Indian reservations or the general neglect shown to Indigenous peoples by the U.S. and Canadian federal government. However, in every case Native/white coexistence was predicated on the cultural assimilation of Indigenous people into white-dominated American society.

8. This is not to say that the cultural differences between Philadelphia and London were so vast as to make reconciliation impossible, nor that the differences were somehow invented as a propaganda ploy by the Patriot cause. What is demonstrably true is that there were significant cultural differences between Britons in Britain proper and those in its American colonies, and those differences were both recognized and on occasion causes for friction between colonial and imperial officials. See Lieven (2000, 113–114)

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Soren Fanning

Soren Fanning is an Associate Professor of world history at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He is a past winner of the American Review of Canadian Studies’ Rufus Z. Smith Award, and studies issues of comparative cultural and national identities, as well as methods of imperial governance.