HIST103: World History (1600–Present)

The Frontier as a Zone of Interaction

The establishment of a "bridgehead" in the form of the initial settlement was followed in many colonies by an expansion driven by the settlers themselves. The state lagged behind expansion, sanctioned it after the event, secured the conquered territory, and implanted its institutions there. The military conquest of Algeria remained an exception to this.

This situation, driven by the settlement dynamic, is referred to as a frontier. While in the American context, Frederick Jackson Turner (1861–1932) romanticized the frontier as a victory march of American civilization through a continent of natural wilderness,⁴⁴ the frontier is now generally viewed as a zone of interaction which is characterized by instability – by the simultaneity of trade and robbery, war and peace, violence and cooperation.⁴⁵

Its moving border was the result of the asymmetrical power relationships between the natives and the settlers. The initially relatively balanced power relationship shifted in favor of the European immigrants due to the arrival of more settlers and, as was the case in North America, due to the decimation of the native population as a result of diseases brought by the settlers and as a result of violence.

The settlers then appropriated the land of the natives and forced the latter into a relationship of colonial subjugation or forced them into reservations. This process was accompanied by an increasingly brutal approach, which in some cases included massacres and even genocide.

The history of settler colonies should, of course, not be judged exclusively from the perspective of the present day, as though those living at the time could have predicted the decimation of the natives. The Beothuk on Newfoundland withdrew when the white settlers arrived and thereby forfeited access to essential resources and died out in 1820,^46. 

The Tasmanians were driven to extinction; native populations elsewhere succeeded in mounting very effective resistance for a long time.⁴⁷ Ultimately, it was the sheer numbers of the arriving settlers and the use of scorched earth policies that brought the Sioux to the Great Plains,⁴⁸ the Aborigines of Australia,⁴⁹ the Maori in New Zealand⁵⁰ and the Native Americans on the northwestern coast of Canada under white rule.⁵¹

The efforts of the colonial powers to restrict or at least control the expansion of the settlers were often defeated by the distances involved, poor communications, or the resistance of the settlers. For example, the attempt by the British authorities to define the Ohio Valley as the western border of settlement through the Quebec Act of 1774 in order to protect their Native American allies was one of the causes of the American Revolution.⁵²

Cities and the Frontier

Contrary to the egalitarian self-image of frontier societies, by no means all settlers engaged in agriculture. The tendency towards the formation of towns and cities emerged early on. The 1820 Settlers in South Africa soon left the parcels of land that had been allotted to them, not just because these parcels were too small and the land was not particularly fertile. Most of the settlers had come from towns and had been traders by profession, and they reverted to this form of livelihood by moving to the garrison towns of the frontier.⁵³ 

 In the United States, towns were less outposts of an already diversified and Europeanized society on the coast than drivers of settler expansion. Chicago is the most famous example of a frontier city, which, from the early 19th century, was connected with the East Coast – initially by the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes and subsequently by the railway – and which drove settler expansion in the Midwest. Infrastructural expansion promoted the expansion of settlement, just as it assisted the colonial nation-building process.⁵⁴

Frontier cities often grew up around forts – as in the case of Chicago – which is understandable given the strategic location of forts. In Siberia, many cities developed from forts, which was in part due to the fact that the territory was initially settled by Cossacks.⁵⁵ In South Africa, the towns of the frontier region grew up around military fortifications and around the residences of landdrosts, the most important officeholders in the interior.⁵⁶

Divergence from the societies of origin was not limited to the social and political institutions but also affected social practices and the settlers' cultural understanding of themselves. As a zone of unrest, the frontier gave rise to a particular settler type, the characteristics of which hardened ideologically into normative expectations. They had a strong assimilatory effect on new immigrants.⁵⁷ 

This understanding of masculinity demanded self-reliance, personal initiative, a willingness to use physical force, and the protection of one's own family. Meanwhile, women were conversely viewed as weak and in need of protection. The right to bear arms was essentially a concomitant of private landownership and the experience of being far removed from the protection of the state.

Of course, how the settlers perceived themselves often deviated from reality. As powerful as the self-perception and performance⁵⁸ of a martialistic masculinity were in many settler colonies, many women were by no means prepared to accept their assigned role "at home in the kitchen." In Australia, a colony that was particularly influenced by colonial masculinity, an effective women's movement emerged. ⁵⁹ and New Zealand was the first country in the world to give women full voting rights in 1893.