The Southern Frontier 1670-1732 by Verner W. Crane


The Southern Frontier 1670-1732
Title : The Southern Frontier 1670-1732
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0817350829
ISBN-10 : 9780817350826
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 391
Publication : First published December 31, 1981

A classic resource on the struggle for dominance in southern North America during the colonial period This volume recounts the clashes and intrigues that played out over the landscape of the Old Southwest and across six decades as the Spanish, French, British, and ultimately Americans vied for control. Rivalry began soon after initial discovery, mapping, and exploration as the world powers, particularly England and France, competed for control of the lucrative fur trade in the Mississippi valley. The French attempted to establish trade networks stretching from the Atlantic Ocean inland to the Mississippi River and northward from ports on the Gulf of Mexico to the Ohio River. But they found the British already entrenched there. Verner Crane guides us through this multinational struggle and navigates the border wars and diplomatic intrigues that played crucial roles in the settlement of the South by Euro-Americans. In his new introduction, Steven Hahn places the work in the context of its time, sketches its publication history, and provides biographical information on Crane.

The Southern Frontier 1670-1732 Reviews

  • William Foner

    An essential read for any History graduate student interested in Early America, or the Native South/Old South. Crane's thesis is focused on the British Empire's imperial policy of the Carolina proprietorship and its colonial design as a zone of influence during the mid-late 17th to mid 18th centuries. Retracing the history of Carolina from its colonial founding all the way up to the formation of Georgia, the reader will understand the rippling effect the colony's development and expansion had on the indigenous and colonial Southeast. Through her diplomatic action and economic exchange in the colonial deer skin trade among the Native tribes, Britain in its exploits and travail maintains an advantageous hold on the Southeastern frontier. Where the book is remarkable, for its time, detailing the diplomatic, economic, and quasi-social history of proprietary Carolina and its imperial policies, its narrative didn't elaborate on the indigenous side of this history. Questions the reader may have that are unrequited and unanswered are what was the meaning of these events from the indigenous point of view? Discussion of Native tribes' motivations and actions are casually passive instead of active as agents adapting economically and socially in response to colonial imposition, and resisting Euroamerican western expansion. Luckily, scholarship through the field of ethnohistory, and history written by both indigenous and non-indigenous historians and scholars (over the past century and recent decades) have been able to answer these type of questions. Despite that issue, given the time when Southern Frontier was published, it is a worthy read and notable in its breadth of archived sources and material. Is it also worth mentioning Southern Frontier made a positive contribution to future research for this period of Early America, still cited within the footnotes of other relevant historical research.

  • Bradley

    This book receives a strong review on account of its being chocked full of useful bits with which one may piece together the world of proprietary Carolina, among others. This is a good survey of diplomatic, political, and economic history of the early Southeast. Crane, like Gallay after him, presents all the rival powers in the Southeast and their interactions, including the Native peoples. The details of the Indian trade are here to the reader's surprise, perhaps. For a book first published in 1929, Crane's interests are surprisingly contemporary: he does not shy away from the Indian slave trade or the debacle at St. Augustine or the Church Controversy. Though the trade is not as prominent as it would become in subsequent works, it is treated and its perpetrators often receive the quick slice of Crane's unexpected wit. Crane is also helpful to the student who wishes to be really steeped in the atmosphere of the time. He discusses the mechanics of the Indian trade: how the skins were moved: on packhorses or burdeners; he discusses the trading firms and the life of traders and Natives alike; and he examines the legislative history of attempts to regulate the Indian trade, in itself a fascinating case study of an early attempt at correcting the inefficiencies, waste and abuses of the marketplace.