Frontier Seaport: Detroit's Transformation Into an Atlantic Entrep (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780226096704)

Detroit's industrial health has long been crucial to the American economy. Today's troubles notwithstanding, Detroit has experienced multiple periods of prosperity, particularly in the second half of the eighteenth century, when the city was the center of the thriving fur trade. Its proximity to the West as well as its access to the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River positioned this new metropolis at the intersection of the fur-rich frontier and the Atlantic trade routes.

In Frontier Seaport, Catherine Cangany details this seldom-discussed chapter of Detroit's history. She argues that by the time of the American Revolution, Detroit functioned much like a coastal town as a result of the prosperous fur trade, serving as a critical link in a commercial chain that stretched all the way to Russia and China--thus opening Detroit's shores for eastern merchants and other transplants. This influx of newcomers brought its own transatlantic networks and fed residents' desires for popular culture and manufactured merchandise. Detroit began to be both a frontier town and seaport city--a mixed identity, Cangany argues, that hindered it from becoming a thoroughly "American" metropolis.

Author: Catherine Cangany
ISBN-10: 022609670X
ISBN-13: 9780226096704
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 03/04/2014
Pages: 288
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.16lbs
Size: 9.24h x 6.39w x 0.85d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2014 pg. 142