Taming a Savage Continent

A Milestone Documents E-text
Table of Contents
Taming a Savage Continent
https://doi.org/10.3735/9781961844605.book.part.047

  You don't have access to this content. Please try to log in with your institution. Sign In

Abstract

From the time of Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase (1803), it became central to the mythology of the United States that its history, culture, and future be shaped by the frontier. In Jefferson’s era, having a frontier itself made the United States rare as a country and unique as a nation-state. (Neither Brazil nor Canada would exercise much independence throughout the nineteenth century.) Only the Russians could be considered similar in their push for overland expansion in the nineteenth century, and even in their case their imperial growth came at the expense not of nomadic societies but of the fabulous old Muslim trade cities along the Silk Road in central Asia.

Contents