Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-s9k8s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-11T02:21:07.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Crossing an Intellectual and Geographic Border

The Importance of Migration in Shaping the Canadian-American Borderlands at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Randy William Widdis
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Canadian-American borderlands have been configured and reconfigured by dynamic flows of trade, investment, migration, family connection, cooperation, and community across the border. One can view this and other borderlands as a dynamic spatiotemporal network with flows, gateways, corridors, and places or as a matrix: a complex web of interactions and dependencies that can in many places at different times be seen to be embedded in unequal economic relations. This article focuses specifically on migration flows in the Canadian-American borderlands during the turn-of-the-twentieth-century period. Flows of people during this period integrated communities on both sides of the border, but such movements varied among the regions that make up the borderland zone. The article uses Canadian and American border-crossing records to show that Canada-U.S. migration must be viewed in relation to patterns of regional transborder development.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , Winter 2010 , pp. 445 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2010 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ackleson, Jason (2000) “Navigating the northern line: Discourses of the U.S.-Canadian borderlands.” Paper presented at the 41st Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Los Angeles, March.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Bannon, John, ed. (1964) Bolton and the Spanish Borderlands. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Bender, Thomas, ed. (2002) Rethinking American History in a Global Age. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Berthoff, Roland (1953) British Immigrants in Industrial America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi K. (1994) The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brookes, Alan (1975–76) “Out-migration from the Maritime Provinces, 1860–1900: Some preliminary considerations.” Acadiensis 5: 26–45.Google Scholar
Bukowczyk, John, Faires, Nora, David, Smith, and Widdis, Randy William (2005) Permeable Border: The Great Lakes Basin as Transnational Region, 1650–1990. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press; Calgary: University of Calgary Press.Google Scholar
Canadian Policy Research Initiative (2004) The Emergence of Cross-Border Regions Roundtable Report. Ottawa, ON: Government of Canada.Google Scholar
Canadian Policy Research Initiative (2005) The Emergence of Cross-Border Regions Interim Report. Ottawa, ON: Government of Canada.Google Scholar
Canadian Policy Research Initiative (2006a) The Emergence of Cross-Border Regions Briefing Note. Ottawa, ON: Government of Canada.Google Scholar
Canadian Policy Research Initiative (2006b) The Emergence of Cross-Border Regions Roundtable Report. Ottawa, ON: Government of Canada.Google Scholar
Canadian Policy Research Initiative (2006c) The Emergence of Cross-Border Regions between Canada and the United States Synthesis Report. Ottawa, ON: Government of Canada.Google Scholar
Canadian Sessional Papers (1912) Number 25. Ottawa, ON: Dominion.Google Scholar
Creighton, Donald (1937) The Empire of the St. Lawrence, 1760–1850. Toronto: Ryerson.Google Scholar
Evans, Sterling, ed. (2006) The Borderlands of the American and Canadian Wests: Essays on Regional History of the Forty-ninth Parallel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Findlay, John, and Coates, Kenneth, eds. (2002) Parallel Destinies: Canadian-American Relations West of the Rockies. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Fishkin, Shelly (2005) “Crossroads of cultures: The transnational turn in American studies; Presidential address to the American Studies Association, November 12, 2004.” American Quarterly 57: 17–57.Google Scholar
Government of Canada, Department of the Interior (1908–18) Lists of Arrivals from the United States. RG 76.Google Scholar
Graäser, Marcus (2009) “World history in a nation-state: The transnational disposition in historical writing in the United States.” Journal of American History 95: 1038–52.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna (1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harris, Cole (1990a) Newsletter for Canadian Historical Geographers 5: 1.Google Scholar
Harris, Cole (1990b) “The Canadian archipelago and the borderlands thesis,” in Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting Program and Abstracts. Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers: 152.Google Scholar
Hornsby, Steven, and Reid, John, eds. (2005) New England and the Maritime Provinces: Connections and Comparisons. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.Google Scholar
Hudson, John (1976) “Migration to an American frontier.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 66: 242–65.Google Scholar
Innis, Harold (1930) The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Innis, Harold (1940) The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy. Toronto: Ryerson.Google Scholar
Innis, Harold (1956) Essays in Canadian Economic History, ed. Innis, Mary Q.. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
INS (1895–1924) Soundex Index to Canadian Border Entries to the United States through the St. Albans, Vermont, District, 1895–1924. Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1891–1957. RG 85, M1461.Google Scholar
Konrad, Victor, and Nicol, Heather (2004) “Boundaries and corridors: Rethinking the Canada–United States borderlands in the post-9/11 era.” Canadian-American Public Policy 60: 1–59.Google Scholar
Lavoie, Yolande (1979) L'émigration des Québécois aux Etats-Unis de 1840 à 1930. Quebec City: Conseil de la Langue Française.Google Scholar
LeBlanc, Robert (1983) “Regional competition for Franco-American repatriates, 1870–1930.” Québec Studies 1: 110–29.Google Scholar
Massey, Doreen (1993) “Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place,” in Bird, Jon, Curtis, Barry, Putnam, Tim, Robertson, George, and Tickner, Lisa (eds.) Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change. London: Routledge: 59–69.Google Scholar
Massey, Doreen (1994) Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Massey, Doreen (1995) “The conceptualization of place,” in Massey, Doreen and Jess, Pat (eds.) A Place in the World? Places, Culture, and Globalization. New York: Oxford University Press: 45–85.Google Scholar
Massey, Doreen (1999) Power-Geometries and the Politics of Space-Time. Heidelberg: Department of Geography, University of Heidelberg.Google Scholar
McKinsey, Lauren, and Konrad, Victor (1989) Borderland Reflections: The United States and Canada. Orono: University of Maine Press.Google Scholar
Meinig, Donald (1998) The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on Five Hundred Years of History. Vol. 3, Transcontinental America, 1850–1913. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Ramirez, Bruno (2001) Crossing the Forty-ninth Parallel: Migration from Canada to the United States, 1900–1930. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Ramirez, Bruno (2004) “Borderland studies and migration: The Canada/United States case,” in Marc Rodriguez (ed.) Repositioning North American Migration History. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press: 16–26.Google Scholar
Robbins, William (1994) Colony and Empire: The Capitalist Transformation of the American West. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Roby, Yves (1990) Les Franco-Américains de la Nouvelle-Angleterre, 1776–1930. Quebec City: Septentrion.Google Scholar
Rodrigue, Jean-Paul (2004) “Freight, gateways, and mega-urban regions: The logistical integration of the Bostwash Corridor.” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 95: 147–61.Google Scholar
Thelen, David (1995) “The nation and beyond: Transnational perspectives on United States history.” Journal of American History 86: 965–75.Google Scholar
Tyrell, Ian (1991) “American exceptionalism in an age of international history.” American History Review 96: 1031–55.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1882) Tenth Census of the United States, 1880. Vols. 1–2. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1902) Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Vols. 1–2. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Widdis, Randy William (1989) “An evaluation of Canadian border crossing records in the study of American-resident migration to the Canadian West.” Bulletin of the Association of North Dakota Geographers 39: 18–35.Google Scholar
Widdis, Randy William (1997) “Borders, borderlands, and Canadian identity: A Canadian perspective.” International Journal of Canadian Studies 15: 49–66.Google Scholar
Widdis, Randy William (1998) With Scarcely a Ripple: Anglo-Canadian Migration into the United States and Western Canada, 1880–1920. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.Google Scholar
Widdis, Randy William (2005) “Migration, borderlands, and national identity: A Canadian perspective,” in John Bukowczyk, Nora Faires, David Smith, and Randy William Widdis, Permeable Border: The Great Lakes Basin as Transnational Region, 1650–1990. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press; Calgary: University of Calgary Press: 152–74.Google Scholar
Widdis, Randy William (2006) “The historical geography of the Canadian-American borderlands, 1784– 1989: Conceptual and methodological challenges,” in Froschauer, Karl, Fabbi, Nadine, and Pell, Susan (eds.) Convergence and Divergence in North America: Canada and the United States. Burnaby, BC: Centre for Canadian Studies, Simon Fraser University: 19–33.Google Scholar
Wynn, Graeme (2005) “Peeping through the cracks: Seeking connections, comparisons, and understanding in unstable space,” in Hornsby, Steven and Reid, John (eds.) New England and the Maritime Provinces: Connections and Comparisons. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press: 295–313.Google Scholar