The Age of the Borderlands - (The David J. Weber the New Borderlands History) by Andrew C Isenberg (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In The Age of the Borderlands, acclaimed historian Andrew C. Isenberg offers a new history of manifest destiny that breaks from triumphalist narratives of US territorial expansion. Isenberg takes readers to the contested borders of Spanish Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, California, Texas, and Minnesota at critical moments in the early to mid-nineteenth century, demonstrating that the architects of American expansion faced significant challenges from the diverse groups of people inhabiting each region. In other words, while the manifest destiny paradigm begins with an assumption of US strength, the government and the agents it dispatched to settle and control the frontier had only a weak presence. Tracing the interconnected histories of Indians, slaves, antislavery reformers, missionaries, federal agents, and physicians, Isenberg shows that the United States was repeatedly forced to accommodate the presence of other colonial empires and powerful Indigenous societies. Anti-expansionists in the borderlands welcomed the precarity of the government's power: The land on which they dwelled was a grand laboratory where they could experiment with their alternative visions for American society. Examining the borderlands offers an understanding not just about frontier spaces but about the nature of the early American state-ambitiously expansionist but challenged by its native and imperial competitors"--

Book Synopsis

In The Age of the Borderlands, acclaimed historian Andrew C. Isenberg offers a new history of manifest destiny that breaks from triumphalist narratives of US territorial expansion. Isenberg takes readers to the contested borders of Spanish Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, California, Texas, and Minnesota at critical moments in the early to mid-nineteenth century, demonstrating that the architects of American expansion faced significant challenges from the diverse groups of people inhabiting each region. In other words, while the manifest destiny paradigm begins with an assumption of US strength, the government and the agents it dispatched to settle and control the frontier had only a weak presence.

Tracing the interconnected histories of Indians, slaves, antislavery reformers, missionaries, federal agents, and physicians, Isenberg shows that the United States was repeatedly forced to accommodate the presence of other colonial empires and powerful Indigenous societies. Anti-expansionists in the borderlands welcomed the precarity of the government's power: the land on which they dwelled was a grand laboratory where they could experiment with their alternative visions for American society. Examining the borderlands offers an understanding not just about frontier spaces but about the nature of the early American state--ambitiously expansionist but challenged by its native and imperial competitors.

Review Quotes

"In The Age of the Borderlands, Andrew C. Isenberg provides a thoughtful overview of various borderlands regions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. . . . One of the most intriguing and classroom-ready components of the book is Isenberg's dissection of Manifest Destiny. . . . The Age of the Borderlands provides a useful critique of prevailing nationalist narratives at a time when such a lesson could hardly be more important."--H-Early-America

"Foregrounding neglected episodes and marginalized actors, Isenberg brilliantly dismantles the persistent myth of U.S. manifest destiny. This is borderlands history that speaks to our own age of volatility and U.S. weakness." -Jay Sexton, author of A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American History

"Read this terrific book, which could be titled Unmanifest Destiny. Then be prepared to dispense with what you thought you knew about the territorial expansion of the United States." -Stephen Aron, president and CEO of the Autry Museum of the American West and professor emeritus, UCLA

"With talent and insight, Isenberg tells surprising new stories of cultural encounters and western settlement. As a result of this important and compelling book, readers will see the West in new ways."--Alan Taylor, author of American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873