This remarkable examination of the border offers an innovative model for looking at the history of borders beyond the “line.” It recenters the story of border creation on Indigenous lands and peoples and demonstrates the complex role the latter played in the construction of the border. This approach will help redefine the very questions historians ask about borders, colonialism, and Indigenous and national histories. Borders, as Benjamin Hoy points out, are never created in isolation but are “drawn on top of a territorial tapestry already established, the new form never vivid enough to block out what came before” (2).
Employing the metaphor of a living thing, Hoy traces the development of the Canadian–US border from childhood (1775–1865) to awkward adolescence (1865–1915) and, finally, to adulthood (1915 and beyond). Frequently characterized by unevenness and doubt, it grew in spurts. The book is oriented around three principal arguments. First, this border, unlike...
