On Edge: New Frontiers in Atlantic History

This last June and July, Dr Rachel Herrmann and Dr Jessica Roney (Temple University, Philadelphia, USA), co-organised the workshop ‘On Edge: New Frontiers in Atlantic History’, which was generously funded through an Adventures in Research Grant from the University of Southampton. This event invited participants to bridge the landed and aquatic frontiers of borderlands and maritime history to investigate in a broadly comparative framework how early modern actors defined, defied, and took advantage of borders, be they on land or on water. The two days of talks provided a forum for its fifteen international participants to explore topics including, but not limited to, port cities, divided, middle, and Native grounds, saltwater frontiers, riverine trade, migration, diaspora, epistemology, and settler colonialism. Papers ranged from a keynote from Bancroft-prize-winning historian Andrew Lipman, on the role of genre in writing histories of Native Americans and frontiers, to British, French, and Native American relationships in Passamaquoddy Bay, to the role of salt as an imperial commodity in the Turks and Caicos Islands, to the role of Sac and Fox conquest of Osages and Missourias vis-à-vis the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Future outputs include a special forum in the William and Mary Quarterly, which Herrmann and Roney will co-edit.