A leading American historian examines the character of the
frontiers of European expansion throughout the modern age,
questioning a notion of frontier freedom popular since Turner.
William McNeill argues that social hierarchy characterized the
frontier more often than pioneer equality. As Europeans traveled to
various lands, bringing new diseases to vulnerable natives,
formerly isolated populations died in great numbers, creating an
"open" frontier where labor was scarce. European efforts to develop
frontier areas involved either a radical leveling of the
hierarchies common in Europe itself or, alternatively, their sharp
reinforcement by resort to slavery, serfdom, peonage, and
indentured labor. Juxtaposing national and transnational
experiences and illuminating the complex interchange of peoples
(and illnesses) in the modern era, Professor McNeill brings the
history of the United States into perspective as an example of a
process that encircled the globe. His book clarifies both the
experience of the global frontier and the processes that now mark
the end of hundreds of year of expansion of the European center.
William H. McNeill is Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service
Professor of History at the University of Chicago. His numerous
books include The Rise of the West (Chicago); Plagues and Peoples
(Doubleday); and The Human Condition (Princeton). Originally
published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest
print-on-demand technology to again make available previously
out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton
University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of
these important books while presenting them in durable paperback
and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is
to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in
the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press
since its founding in 1905.
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