Frontier Seaport

In "Frontier Seaport," Catherine Cangany looks at the economy, culture, and politics of colonial Detroit to better understand its coexistence in both the Atlantic world and the frontier. Although Detroit s frontier associations have been well documented, Cangany argues that Detroit s Atlantic connections were thoroughly established by the mid-eighteenth century despite the settlement s 650-mile separation from the east coast and rivaled those of more cosmopolitan spaces. Drawing on business records, customs and port papers, personal and commercial correspondence, visual images, and much else, Cangany demonstrates that Detroit s positioning as a successful yet remote fur-trading center in fact hastened its economic and cultural incorporation into the broader Atlantic world. Located at the heart of the Great Lakes, inhabited and fought over by three world powers, and within easy reach of furs and fur-suppliers, Detroit occupied a geographically desirable and financially profitable niche in the fur trade. This position in turn made it prone to regular influxes of eastern merchants and other transplants, who brought with them their transatlantic commercial networks and their desire for and access to popular culture and merchandise. By considering frontier and Atlantic together, and by parsing Detroit s political, commercial, and cultural ties to each, Canganyforces a reimagining of early America and its relationship with empire."

Catherine Cangany is assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame.