Frontier Cities

Macau, New Orleans, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. All of these metropolitan centers were once frontier cities, urban areas irrevocably shaped by cross-cultural borderland beginnings. Spanning a wide range of periods and locations, and including stories of 18th-century Detroit, 19th-century Seattle, and 20th-century Los Angeles, Frontier Cities recovers the history of these urban places and shows how, from the start, natives and newcomers alike shared streets, buildings, and interwoven lives. Not only do frontier cities embody the earliest matrix of the American urban experience; they also testify to the intersections of colonial, urban, western, and global history. The 12 essays in this collection paint compelling portraits of frontier cities and their inhabitants: the French traders who bypassed imperial regulations by throwing casks of brandy over the wall to Indian customers in 18th-century Montreal; Isaac Friedlander, San Francisco's "Grain King"; and Adrien de Pauger,