Proquest Dissertations
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
FRONTIERS, OCEANS AND COASTAL CULTURES: A PRELIMINARY RECONNAISSANCE by David R. Jones A Thesis Submitted to Saint Mary's University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Atlantic Canada Studues December, 2007, Halifax, Nova Scotia Copyright David R. Jones Approved: Dr. M. Brook Taylor External Examiner Dr. Peter Twohig Reader Dr. John G. Reid Supervisor September 10, 2008 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-46160-0 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-46160-0 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada Frontiers, Oceans and Coastal Cultures: A Preliminary Investigation by David R. Jones A Thesis Submitted to Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MA in Atlantic Canada Studies December 2007, Halifax, Nova Scotia Copyright David R. Jones Approved: Dr. John G. Reid Supervisor Approved: Dr. Peter L. Twohig Reader Approved: Dr. Brook M. Taylor External Examiner Date: December 14,2007 2 ABSTRACT FRONTIERS, OCEANS AND COASTAL CULTURES: A PRELIMINARY RECONNAISSANCE by David R. Jones Abstract: Part I of this study examines the practical and symbolic connotations according the term "frontier" over time. Opening with its limited military-territorial usage in colonial North America, I consider this within the context of the theories of Frederick Jackson Turner, the later impact of those theories, and the redefinitions proposed by his later critics and defenders. In this process a fortified zone of cross-border conflict became a leading edge of agricultural settlement and, later still, an often distant border region. Within this last, pioneer-frontiersmen are usually prominent. Meanwhile the material, intellectual, spiritual and other cultural values of an established centre or metropolis are first asserted in often primitive and hostile conditions, only to later rebound to interact with the home metropolis. In Part III investigate the extent to which the Turner and post- Turner concepts are applicable to the activities carried out on the oceans that cover some 70 percent of Earth's surface. Apart from the territorial frontier nature of many coastlines, I propose there is a more general "Oceanic Frontier" on which mariner-frontiersmen are the equivalents of their traditional counterparts on land. This Oceanic Frontier comprise three sub-frontiers: the coastline on land; the maritime (or adjacent) coastal waters; and the distant high seas or "oceanic" frontier per se. All exist in a symbiotic relationship that has a unique impact on the mariner-frontiersmen who exploit them, as well as on the coastal dwellers who support them. Finally, I suggest this results in essential cultural differences between inhabitants of such maritime frontiers and those of the traditionally agricultural, often initially peasant, cultures of the continental interiors. December 12, 2007 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My interest in the maritime aspect of this study springs from the traditions of the seafaring Yarmouth family of my mother, Mary Allen Jones, as well as my own fascination with the Halifax waterfront of my youth. This has merged with a fascination in the history of Atlantic Canada which I inherited from my father, Dr. Robert O. Jones; from his friend Alexander H. Leighton, and from our summer neighbour in Bedford, John Bartlet Brebner, who for many years taught summer school in Halifax. More recently and directly, I am grateful to John G. Reid for his knowledge, friendship and above all else, for his patience; to Harry Thurston for his poetry and parallel interest in my topic; to my friend Jane Crittenden of Pensacola, Florida, for her constant, long distance encouragement; to Dr. Ralph Stuart of Acadia University for our many fruitful conversations on Scottish history and the diaspora; and to Dr. Boris Raymond and numerous other friends who have listened to the endless musings that eventually became distilled in what follows. Needless to say, I alone am responsible for any errors and all the remaining problems that remain. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 2 Acknowledgments 3 Introduction: The Persistence of Memory 5 Part I: Frontiers in Theory and Practice 27 Chapter I: North America's First Frontiers - Three Case Studies 28 Chapter II: The American "Backcountry," "Westward Movement," and Frederick Jackson Turner 201 Chapter III: Turner's Frontier and Other Places, Other Times, Other Theories 313 Part II: The Ocean Frontier 399 Chapter IV: The One Big Ocean - A Water World 400 Chapter V: Defining the Oceanic Frontier 460 Chapter VI: Coastal Communities and the Oceanic Frontier 555 Conclusion: The Two Frontiers 619 Bibliography of Works Cited 633 INTRODUCTION THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY I admit it. perhaps only a poet could love the Atlantic's sombre palette: shale grey, bilge green, milt blue; the blood red of sky in the sailor's rhyme, memorizing the horizon's warning of delight. The constant companionship of fog, a sibling presence, a kind of tide clock, mantra of sea breath always billowing from the harbour's mouth; the diaphone, mythic half-human, half-animal, a Minotaur tethered at land's end, bellowing day and night. The gull's perfect flight, precise as origami, floating up from the fish-mongering docks. The thrum of marine diesel, tap of slant-six salvaged from some rust-eaten wreck. The salt. The smell of the sea shore ~ Georges or Grand Banks, Banquereau, even Sable's sands shuffling beneath our feet on Water Street. — Harry Thurston, "Atlantic Elegy, 1: The Salt," in If Men Lived on Earth (Wolfville, NS: Gaspereau Press; 2000), p. 131. 6 In 1851 John Babsone Lane Soule issued the call "Go West, young man" in the Express of Terre Haute, Indiana. Probably unwittingly, he gave voice to the spirit of his times. His cry was taken up and expanded by the journalist Horace Greeley who, in an editorial in The New York Tribune, advised "Go west, young man, and grow up with the country."1 With this, he encouraged the great "Westward Movement" which had begun when settlers pushed across the Appalachians into the Ohio in the 1770s-1780s, and which gave birth to the celebrated and fabled Western frontier of popular literature, comic books, musicals, movies and television.2 For Nova Scotians like myself and the poet quoted above, the lure of the West was balanced by the call of the ever-present ocean. I was raised in a family steeped in tales of tall-ship voyages from Yarmouth to China, I have always felt instinctively drawn to sea. Although no poet, I too checked the sunset to forecast the morrow's likely weather, slept on foggy nights with the sound of the Minotaur's bellow in my ears, tasted the salt in the air, and filled my nostrils with the smell offish when the wind blew from the east, or of that of raw rubber and diesel oil while I roamed the docks with friends on a warm June night. My grandmother's house was packed with brass and porcelain brought by her family's captains from China. My aged uncle's last girlfriend had rounded the Horn (with her parents and older sister) at age twelve, and laughingly recalled how angry her Quoted in John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations. 12th rev. ed., ed. Christopher Morley and Louella D. Everett, (Boston, Little, Brown; 1951), p. 505, and footnote 1. The development of this "frontier" concept, and its impact on American history and culture, is examined further in chapters I-III below. 7 skipper-father became when they revealed their youthful ankles while climbing in the rigging. But that era is past and like other Maritimers, members of our family later began emigrating south to the "Boston States," or west to "Upper Canada" or "On-tar-ar-io." As for the harbour front of my youth, the arched gates to the wharfs are gone, and while the majority of docks have given way to the ugly fences and angular cranes of the container ports. So to are most of the working tugs, now replaced by the yachts of the privileged while the erstwhile wharfs have become boardwalks for tourists seeking snacks, drinks or souvenirs, along which those from the tour liners trek to deposit their cash in the Casino.