The Canadian West and the American Northwest offer a valuable setting for considering issues of borders and borderlands. The regions contain certain similarities, and during the first half of the nineteenth century they were even grouped together as a distinct political and economic unit, called the "Oregon Country" by Americans and the "Columbia Department" of the Hudson's Bay Company by the British.
The essays in this volume -- which grew out of a conference commemorating the Oregon Treaty of 1846 -- view the boundary between Canada and the United States as a dividing line and also as a regional backbone, with people on each side of the border having key experiences and attitudes in common. In their eloquence and scope, they illustrate how historical study of Canadian-American relations in the West calls into question the parameters of the nation-state.
The border has not had a single constant meaning; rather, its significance has changed over time and varied from group to group. The essays in Part One concern the movement of peoples and capital across a relatively permeable boundary during the nineteenth century. Many people in this era--especially Natives, miners, immigrants, and capitalists--did not regard the international boundary as particularly important. Part Two considers how the United States and Canada took pains to strengthen and enforce the international boundary during the twentieth century. In this era, the nation-state became more assertive about defining and defending the borderline. Part Three offers considerations of the distinctions, both real and imagined, that emerged during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries between Canada and the United States. Its essays examine different schools of history, divergent ideas toward wilderness, and the influence of anti-Americanism on Canadians' view of national development in North America.
John M. Findlay is Professor Emeritus of History at University of Washington. He is the author of People of Chance: Gambling in American Society from Jamestown to Las Vegas (Oxford University Press, 1986); Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture after 1940 (University of California Press, 1992); and Atomic Frontier Days: Hanford and the American West, with Bruce Hevly (University of Washington Press, 2011). He has also co-edited three multi-author volumes that had their origins as symposia at the University of Washington's Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest: The Atomic West, eds. Bruce Hevly and John M. Findlay (1998); Power and Place in the North American West, eds. Richard White and John M. Findlay (1999); and Parallel Destinies: Canadians, Americans, and the Western Border, eds. John M. Findlay and Ken Coates (2002).
Kenneth S. Coates is professor and Canada Research Chair in Regional Innovation at the University of Saskatchewan. He is author of many books, including #IdleNoMore: And the Remaking of Canada (University of Regina Press, 2015), A Global History of Indigenous Peoples: Struggle and Survival (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004), The Marshall Decision and Native Rights (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), and Best Left as Indians: Native-White Relations and the Yukon Territory (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991).
