Permeable Border: The Great Lakes Basin As Transnational Region 1650-1990

by John J Bukowczyk, Nora Faires, David R Smith, Randy William Widdis

Overview

From the colonial era of waterborne transport, through nineteenth-century changes in transportation and communication, to globalization, the history of the Great Lakes Basin has been shaped by the people, goods, and capital crossing and recrossing the U.S.-Canadian border.

During the past three centuries, the region has been buffeted by efforts to benefit from or defeat economic and political integration and by the politics of imposing, tightening, or relaxing the bisecting international border. Where tariff policy was used in the early national period to open the border for agricultural goods, growing protectionism in both countries transformed the border into a bulwark against foreign competition after the 1860s. In the twentieth century, labor migration followed by multinational corporations fundamentally altered the customary pairing of capital and nation to that of capital versus nation, challenging the concept of international borders as key factors in national development.

In tracing the economic development of the Great Lakes Basin as borderland and as transnational region, the authors of Permeable Border have provided a regional history that transcends national borders and makes vital connections between two national histories that are too often studied as wholly separate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822942610
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	09/20/2005
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

John J. Bukowczyk is professor of history and director of the Canadian Studies Program at Wayne State University in Detroit. 

Nora Faires is associate professor of history and women’s studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. 

David R. Smith is a history instructor and academic advisor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 

Randy William Widdis is professor of geography at the University of Regina.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: The Production of History, the Becoming of Place
John J. Bukowczyk

Chapter 2: Trade War, Migration, and Empire in the Great Lakes Basin, 1650-1815
John J. Bukowczyk

Chapter 3: Migration, Transportation, Capital and the State in the Great Lakes Basin, 1815-1890
John J. Bukowczyk

Chapter 4: Leaving the "Land of the Second Chance:" Migration from Ontario to the Upper Midwest in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Nora Faires

Chapter 5: Structuring the Permeable Border: Channeling and Regulating Cross-Border Traffic in Labour, Capital, and Goods
David R. Smith

Chapter 6: Migration, Borderlands, and National Identity: Directions for Research
Randy William Widdis

Chapter 7: Region, Border, and Nation
John J. Bukowczyk

Appendix: Primary Sources in Migration Studies
Randy William Widdis

Notes
Further Reading
Select Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

Permeable Border  offers a fresh, thought-provoking inquiry into the history of U.S.-Canadian relations.  Examining economic development, migration, and national policies, these essays throw light on the changing patterns of cross-border interaction in the Great Lakes region since 1800.  This book will be essential reading for scholars interested in an integrated view of North American history, and makes a valuable contribution to contemporary debates over globalization.
—Christopher Clark, University of Connecticut

From the Publisher