The untold history of the multiracial making of the border between Canada and the United States. Often described as the longest undefended border in the world, the Canada-United States border was born in blood, conflict, and uncertainty. At the end of the American Revolution, Britain and the United States imagined a future for each of their nations that stretched across a continent. They signed treaties with one another dividing lands neither country could map, much less control. A century and a half later, they had largely fulfilled those earlier ambitions. Both countries had built nations that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific and had created an expansive international border that restricted movement. The vision that seemed so clear in the minds of diplomats and politicians was never so well-defined on the ground. As A Line of Blood and Dirt argues, both countries built their border across Indigenous lands using hunger, violence, and coercion to displace existing communities and to disrupt their ideas of territory and belonging. Drawing on oral histories, map visualizations, and archival sources, Benjamin Hoy reveals the role Indigenous people played in the development of the international boundary, as well as the impact the border had on Indigenous people, European settlers, Chinese migrants, and African Americans. Unable to prevent movement at the border's physical location for over a century, Canada and the United States instead found ways to project fear across international lines. Bringing together the histories of tribes, immigration, economics, and the relationship of neighboring nations, A Line of Blood and Dirt offers a new history of Indigenous peoples and the borderland.

About the Author
Benjamin Hoy is an assistant professor of history at University of Saskatchewan, where he directs the Historical GIS Lab.

Reviews
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.... Combining private and personal perspectives with government documents, Hoy provides an excellent model for entwining cultural and political histories. The result shows not only what happened but also how people perceived the changes over time....The book is sure to be a boon to readers of all levels: academic, popular, graduate, and undergraduate. * M. Max Hamon, Ethnohistory *
A superb work of historical research and nuanced analysis. Hoy's study is a significant contribution to the literature on North American and Indigenous history. It is also an important addition to the interdisciplinary field of borderlands studies and would be appreciated by social scientists interested in institution- and nation-building, comparative politics, immigration studies, or the workings and reform of bureaucracy. * Pierre M. Atlas, History: Reviews of New Books *
A thorough historical account of the making of the US-Canada border. Nowadays naturalized and conceptualized as an almost straight line separating two sovereign countries and major powers in North America, Hoy's work helpfully reminds us that such is far from the case. The US-Canada border, Hoy shows, was in the making for over two hundred years....While recent political events have highlighted the violent nature of borders and border-making, national-imperial borders remain more or less a naturalized existence for most people. This book is a good introduction to anyone interested in learning and rethinking borders, borderlands, settler-colonialism, and modern US and Canadian history, and a very productive intervention in these fields. * Janice Feng, Journal of Australian, Canadian, and Aotearoa New Zealand Studies *
Hoy...provid[es] a nearly comprehensive look at the 'northern' border's evolution on the ground....The forty-ninth parallel represented a complicated sanctuary for some, while, for others, the border was a profound encumbrance to mobility....A Line of Blood and Dirt strives to balance scope and analysis and is successful in doing so....Abstractions of the local or regional are an inherent challenge of producing such a sweeping history, and yet Hoy still convincingly demonstrates the utility of examining the Canada-US border in a single frame. Though written for an academic audience, this very readable book will be an important resource for anyone studying North American history, Indigenous history, or historical geography.. * Patrick Lozar, Canadian Historical Review *
[Hoy's] central theme is that the creation of the Canada-U.S. border was difficult, messy, and mostly unplanned....Another central thread follows both governments' desires to use the international boundary to inhibit the movements of people they considered undesirable. Each government feared that Indigenous and First Nations peoples' transborder migrations might lead to violence. More importantly, both wanted to confine these groups to their respective reserves and reservations hoping to make their policies of forced assimilation more effective....At different times each nation also used its border to inhibit the movement of African-Americans, Chinese, and European immigrants....This study offers a clear and persuasive analysis of the differing views each government and its citizens had about border issues. * Roger L. Nichols, Journal of American History *
Adopting a sophisticated perspective on federal border control efforts...A Line of Blood and Dirt managed to capture the complicated history of the Canada-US border as it developed across time and space....The book helps to demythologize the Canada-US border, which both countries are all too keen to depict as the longest undefended border in the world. Instead, Hoy deftly lays bare how the violence, intimidation, and fear that the border has struck into the hearts of different people in different places was integral to its creation across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. * Lawrence B. A. Hatter, American Historical Review *
Benjamin Hoy has written a fresh history of the Canadian-American boundary. Histories of the border have typically been written with a focus on the diplomacy of settlement: agreements to resolve conflicts between states or to prevent future disputes, the powers of diplomats to negotiate boundaries, or the establishment of sovereignty....Hoy is concerned primarily with the questions of who has been walled in and walled out and particularly to whom this wall-boundary wall-has given offence....To do this, he has undertaken extensive research in Canada and the United States examining numerous collections of Indigenous records, as well as conventional diplomatic papers. The book gives a vivid picture of how the border worked and how it affected people...[especially] Indigenous people, immigrants, or people of colour. * Francis M. Carroll, Prairie History *
A Line of Blood and Dirt is a deeply researched and sweeping narrative of the US-Canada border that underscores the centrality of Indigenous people to the development of state power in North America. Hoy provides a powerful account of how the construction and enforcement of this boundary between two nations was a critical part of those nations' shared project to dominate and dispossess Native people. * Rachel St. John, author of Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border *
An ambitious, sweeping contribution to the growing scholarly literature on the history of the American-Canadian borderlands. Benjamin Hoy emphasizes the importance of conflict, violence, disputes, and extra-legal activities in the making of the Canada-United States border from 1776 to the early twentieth century. * Ted Binnema, University of Northern British Columbia *
Benjamin Hoy analyzes the multiple constructions and innumerable contestations of the Canada-US border from 'above' (the imperial/national level) and 'below' (borderlands individuals and communities). His work deftly and thoroughly combines Indigenous, Asian, and settler histories and sources. This book will appeal to anyone who specializes in the history of North America's borderlands, Indigenous peoples, migration, or North American state formation and regulatory regimes. I can't say enough good things about this book. * Sheila McManus, University of Lethbridge *
Hoy's brilliant synthesis of the Canada-US border history...takes readers through a longue-duree sweep of the border's history-readers learn about the border's founding during the era of the Revolutionary War, the consequences of Native conceptions of space during the period of the US Civil War, attempts to rein in border violence during the late 19th century, the control of people and goods crossing the line at the turn of the 20th, and the border as a real-world geopolitical line that people dealt with on a daily basis through the 20th century. This volume is, quite simply, the most sweeping and perhaps most humane treatment of the Canada-US border's long history. * Choice *
Novel and powerful is Hoy's dedication to demonstrating how Indigenous peoples were not hapless victims of border creation and enforcement....Race, proximity to the border, the impact of broader geopolitical developments, the surprisingly potent influence of local border officials, and other factors all complicate attempts to generalize what the border meant to people or how it influenced them....The consistent inclusion of on-the-ground perspectives adds striking intimacy and humanity to what could otherwise be a macrolevel and impersonal administrative text....Hoy's analytical apparatus and methodology elevate what would already be a useful narrative of border history.....Scholars on both sides of the Canada-US border in a host of historical fields will greatly benefit from this carefully researched and powerfully written text. * Brenden W. Rensink, Canadian Journal of History *
A marvellous easy-to-follow examination of the Canadian-American borderlands from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean from the 1870s to the 1930s. It is a well-written and enjoyable narrative of how Canada and the United States created an international border across a landscape already filled with Indigenous borders....Throughout its history, the border comes more clearly into focus through its inconsistencies, impositions, contestations, and inequalities. What is clear is the centrality of Indigenous peoples to the development of the border. A Line of Blood and Dirt is...a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the stretch and limit of state power along a border and its impact on peoples. * Karl Hele, Anishinabek News *


Awards
Winner of Honorable Mention, H. Wayne Morgan Prize, Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era Winner, Governor General's History Award for Scholarly Research Winner, Albert B. Corey Prize, American Historical Association and the Canadian Historical Association Winner, CHA Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History Prize, Canadian Historical Association Winner, Best Book in Political History Prize, Canadian Historical Association.



Book Information
ISBN 9780197528693
Author Benjamin Hoy
Format Hardback
Page Count 344
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 635g
Dimensions(mm) 157mm * 236mm * 31mm