“The Principle Object of Their Affections:” The Changing Nature of Borders and Boundaries in the Lake Erie World, 1794-1825

From 1794 to 1825, a distinct transnational community developed along the American-Canadian border around Lake Erie that matured first through social contact and strengthened with trade.Nationality mattered little, as people of various backgrounds developed unique relationships in a shared border space that existed on the frontier of many societies.The strong social ties strained under the threat of war in 1812, and suffered extensively through a retaliatory conflict along border spaces.Broken kinships followed bifurcated loyalties in the years following the war, leading to a dramatic decline in cross-border interaction.As friends and families broke apart, the fur trade kept transnational contact alive, but only for as long as there were animals to hunt.The Fig. 1: Drawn through mainly hearsay and estimation, this map gives unrealistic details to key political points in North America, primarily in terms of where waterways are. 3 The Great Lakes, specifically Lake Erie, remained even more ambiguous and undefined than the rest of the border.It lay along the "frontier" of both the United States and Upper Canada and held a large population of indigenous peoples.It existed as a "fifth coast" in North America, as it saw a large volume of traffic similar to the Atlantic coastline and granted great access to the continental interior.4 With direct connections to the Atlantic through the Niagara and Saint Lawrence Rivers, and as a passageway to the western parts of North America through the Detroit River, Lake Erie acted as an easily accessible gate through which people could travel.5 For settlers, the massive water basin made the Lake Erie watershed an excellent place for agricultural development.Low lying land with sandy soil made the coastal regions ideal for farming.No oversight over the border allowed people to move as they wished, and led to a wide 3 John Mitchell, A Map of the British Colonies in North America (London: William Faden, 1775).http://www.oshermaps.org/special- map-exhibits/mitchell-map.

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.