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

John J. Bukowczyk, Nora Faires, David W. Smith, and Randy William Widdis. Permeable Border: The Great Lakes Basin as Transnational Region, 1650-1990. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. vii + 298 pp. $34.95 cloth. Permeable Border, the outgrowth of conference held at Wayne State University about the Great Lakes region and the international boundary dividing its lakes and lands, makes real contribution to understanding the region's development over the centuries. It focuses on the flow of people, capital, and goods in the Great Lakes area before and after its political division in 1783 as the major elements in creating the transnational region. While Canadian and American historians have generally emphasized main themes in their national experiences and given far less attention to the interrelationship of regional economic and cultural developments that transcend the border, many have dealt specifically with various parts thereof, some large and some small. To study the Great Lakes region comprehensively over the centuries, fluid and hard to define as that region is, involves challenge in conceptualization, in mastery of relevant literature, and in basic research. The results of the work of the four authors--three historians and one geographer--presented in Permeable Border offer readers an impressive historical overview of the Great Lakes region and suggest future directions for study. The book is divided into seven units, each focusing on segment of the whole and presenting different perspective on the subject. In the initial chapter, historian Bukowczyk explains the authors' perception of border as an artificial and permeable line and a principal mechanism for articulating and implementing immigration, economic development, and nation-building policies while it has become, on symbolic level, the embodiment of national identity and sovereignty (3). Here he sets forth the goal of the book as an attempt to correct deficiency in current studies of American-Canadian history--namely, consideration of the interrelated nature of American and Canadian economic development in the Great Lakes region. Here the authors deny intention of arguing for Canadian-American political merger or any other such arrangement that would compromise Canadian (or American) sovereignty, unity, or cultural integrity (9). In the two following chapters, Bukowczyk examines the roles of trade, wars, migration, transportation, and capital during the years 1650-1890 in the Great Lakes basin as major ingredients in the development of transnational region. The intricately woven account of the period 1660-1815 relates the interaction between the Native Peoples, the French, the British, and the young United States from the perspective of its impact on the Great Lakes region. In the process the French bow out and the Native Peoples are irreparably weakened by war, disease, and alcohol. British North America and the young United States are left as the principal contenders seeking to dominate the region's natural resources. Whose transnational region was it? (28). That was the question in 1815. Bukowczyk's treatment of the period 1815-1890 traces the impact of the transportation revolution--canal, railroad, and road building--in the two nations, all three major influences on economic development. …

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