Synopses & Reviews
Review
"In this highly readable volume, the authors set in motion an Old Dominion often portrayed as static. Their narrative follows white and black Virginians as they moved from the Chesapeake to the Blue Ridge and beyond. This book expands on the excellent catalog produced for the Virginia Historical Society's exhibition commemorating the centennial of Frederick Jackson Turner's 'frontier' thesis. Unfortunately, the authors adopt rather uncritically Turner's 1893 language, even when they disagree with him. By framing their debate in terms of 'free land,' for example, they ignore Native Americans altogether. Consequently, they dismiss as 'fashionable' historians' fruitful paradigm shift to a 'borderlands' approach, which emphasizes cultural interaction and power relations. Thus, Fischer and Kelly fail to engage the fine and diverse scholarship of Stephen Aron, Richard White, William Cronon, Karen Kupperman, Michael McConnell, Gregory Dowd, David Usner, James Merrell, Helen Rountree, and others. Fischer and Kelly are more successful in their portrayal of the diversity and diffusion of Virginia culture and in their account of white Virginians' nostalgia for a nonexistent, stable 'Old Dominion.' The book is copiously illustrated, but the maps anachronistically delete Kentucky and West Virginia from Virginia's colonial and antebellum territory." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 305-340) and index.