Andrew Hill Clark (1911-1975) was responsible for much of the recent rise of historical geography in North America. The focus on his research was the opening of New World lands by European peoples, and this North American experience is the subject of this collection of essays written by eight of Clark's students. They examine the role of a new physical and economic environment – particularly abundant and cheap land – in the settlement of New France, the cultural and physical problems that conditioned Russian America, the transformation of cultural regionalism in the eastern United States between the late colonial seaboard and the early republican interior, the changing economic geography of rice farming on the antebellum Southern seaboard, the interrelationships of the European and Indian economies in the pre-conquest fur trade of Canada, differential acculturation and ethnic territoriality among three immigrant groups in Kansas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the development in England and the United States of similar social geographic images of the Victorian city, and the erosion of a sense of place and community by possessive individualism in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. The essays are preceded by an appreciation of Clark as an historical geographer written by D.W. Meinig and are brought together in an epilogue by John Warkentin. The work is an unusually consistent Festchrift which should appeal to all interested in the patterns of North American settlement.

This new edition of Brogan's superb one-volume history - from early British colonisation to the Reagan years - captures an array of dynamic personalities and events. In a broad sweep of America's triumphant progress. Brogan explores the period leading to Independence from both the American and the British points of view, touching on permanent features of 'the American character' - both the good and the bad. He provides a masterly synthesis of all the latest research illustrating America's rapid growth from humble beginnings to global dominance.

This volume in Oxford's A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise, readable narrative of the vast span of American history, from the earliest human migrations to the early twenty-first century when the United States loomed as a global power and comprised a complex multi-cultural society of more than 300 million people. The narrative is organized around major interpretive themes, with facts and dates introduced as needed to illustrate these themes. The emphasis throughout is on clarity and accessibility to the interested non-specialist.

The Role of Indigenous People in the Founding of America's First Major Border Towns In 1811, while escorting members of John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company up the Columbia River, their Chinookan guide refused to advance beyond a particular point that marked a boundary between his people and another indigenous group. Long before European contact, Native Americans created and maintained recognized borders, ranging from family hunting and fishing properties to larger tribal territories to vast river valley regions. Within the confines of these respective borders, the native population often established permanent settlements that acted as the venues for the major political, economic, and social activities that took place in virtually every part of precolonial North America. It was the location of these native settlements that played a major role in the establishment of the first European, and later, American frontier towns. In Settling the Frontier: Urban Development in America's Borderlands, 1600-1830, historian Joseph P. Alessi examines how the Pecos, Mohawk, Ohioan, and Chinook tribal communities aided Europeans and Americans in the founding of five of America's earliest border towns--Santa Fe (New Mexico), Fort Amsterdam (New York City), Fort Orange (Albany, New York), Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), and Fort Astoria (Portland, Oregon). Filling a void in scholarship about the role of Native American communities in the settlement of North America, Alessi reveals that, although often resistant to European and American progress or abused by it, Indians played an integral role in motivating and assisting Europeans with the establishment of frontier towns. In addition to the location of these towns, the native population was often crucial to the survival of the settlers in unfamiliar and unforgiving environments. As a result, these new towns became the logistical and economic vanguards for even greater development and exploitation of North America.

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (1519–1574) founded St. Augustine in 1565. His expedition was documented by his brother-in-law, Gonzalo Solís de Merás, who left a detailed and passionate account of the events leading to the establishment of America’s oldest city. Until recently, the only extant version of Solís de Merás’s record was one single manuscript that Eugenio Ruidíaz y Caravia transcribed in 1893, and subsequent editions and translations have always followed Ruidíaz’s text. In 2012, David Arbesú discovered a more complete record: a manuscript including folios lost for centuries and, more important, excluding portions of the 1893 publication based on retellings rather than the original document. In the resulting volume, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Conquest of Florida, Arbesú sheds light on principal events missing from the story of St. Augustine’s founding. By consulting the original chronicle, Arbesú provides readers with the definitive bilingual edition of this seminal text.