3

Meinig, D. W.  The Shaping of America: A Geographical
Perspective on 500 Years of History, vol. 1, Atlantic
America, 1492-1800.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.

     

     D. W. Meinig has noticed a willingness among historians

to reassess in depth the basic themes of American history, a

reassessment that will "reinvent" America for at least the

second time (xviii).  Meinig offers Atlantic America to

facilitate that reassessment by offering an example of an

American geographical history, or historical geography.

This work focuses on structures and systems, and therefore

addresses international and Transatlantic relations as

handily as those between much smaller geographic regions.

Meinig's description of these structures and systems is

illustrated through by idiosyncratically focused viewpoint,

concerned mainly with cultural and social matters (xvi).

     As is common with others who are involved with the

reassessment of America, Meinig's bias is to view the

European encounter with the New World as a solely

destructive force ("massive aggression", "ugly,

destructive") rather than developmental or constructive

(xviii).  Oddly, his use of biological, usually

unflattering, organic metaphors ("predatory", "hybrid",

"great swarming") to describe the spreading influence of

European culture undercuts his insistence that he is not

suggesting a "quasi-natural process at work" (6, 12, 93,

xv).  Also fashionable among reassessors is ceremonial

respect for the American indigenes, who "deserve recognition

at the same basic scale as given to Europeans" (82).  Even

though Meinig claims the Indian contributions to America

were not just obstructionist, he offered little evidence of

Indian cultural or social influence on America.

Atlantic America, a self-described "panorama and synthesis"

rather than a reference, relies heavily on secondary sources

(xxi), although some Hakluyt and Franklin documents and

travel letters and journals add cultural grounding.  Among

historians, Meinig favors Morison and Comager, and Bailyn.

The author also mentions favorite geographical works by

Miller, Reps, and the maps of Friis

     As might be expected from an author who writes about

structure and process, Atlantic America benefits from a well-

developed structure.  Meinig uses the preface to qualify his

project and to define some geographic principles useful to

the uninitiated historian.  The first section, "Outreach",

describes the development of an Atlantic system along lines

familiar to most.  More importantly, though, this section

laid the theoretical framework for the sections to follow.

     Of chief importance to Meinig's synthesis is his

adoption of didactic simplifications like "seafaring,

conquering, and planting" and "selection, imitation, and

divergence" (7,435).  Although he recognizes these as

imperfect reductions, they provide a convenient schema for

the reader.  Meinig describes both Spanish and

French/English encounters with the new world in terms of an

extension of their European "cultural hearths", powered by a

super-marginal "instrument of expansion" (52-3).  Spain's

outreach was an inheritor of the reconquista spirit, post-

Moor, while the French and English had less direct

precedent, but had religious intolerance for a goad and

commercial personality conducive to pragmatism.  After this

delineation the European source regions, in his second

section Meinig mounts a taxonomic effort to describe

American peoples and regions, and their inherent

geopolitical agitation.  The work at this point has made a

transition from the World- or Transatlantic-historical to

the regional (not yet national).

     In the third section Meinig fleshes out the

machinations of Atlantic empires and their infighting, and

then the growing national self-consciousness of the states

as they pulled away from England after her seeming Imperial

victory over Spain and France.  The last section describes

the nominal nation around 1800 as it begins to sort itself

out governmentally and socially.  He uses architectural

style (federal, neoclassical, etc) to illustrate the complex

intertwining of European influences and stubborn national

independence in American culture.  By stopping here, the

author sets the stage for Volume 2, covering the lion's

share of nineteenth-century American geographical history.

     As with The Frozen Echo, Atlantic America has gathered

substantial footing as an academic textbook, although I

would be surprised if it were controversial.  There are

points of view that geographers can use to illuminate

historians (like the Imperial dismay at American reactions

after1763. How else could the Empire regulate all the new

territory?) but they are not controversial like theories

about the demise of Greenlanders.  Like Cod, Atlantic

America moved easily in both the Atlantic and American

scopes, providing both overarching schemas and sufficient

local detail to ground the text to the real world.  One

sticking point: Meinig frequently expresses interest in

power relations (particularly center-margin relations) but

declines to discuss them at any length.  Perhaps an addendum

or series of diagrams (which he seems to like) would have

been possible there.



jason carr


http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/transatlantic/