Wed, Mar 18
|Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse
John Oliphant, Britain’s Wilderness Frontier: North American Borderlands 1748-1775
Looking at the period between 1748 and 1774, John Oliphant draws on a variety of sources to explore how British attempts to restrict settlement and protect Native American lands was a significant cause of the American Revolution, especially in the southern colonies.
Date, Time & Location
Mar 18, 2026, 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse, 202 Galisteo St, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA
About the Event
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Order Britain's Wilderness Frontier ($36.99, hardcover ) online from CWB here or call the store to order (505) 988-4226
How and with what prospect of success do empires manage their distant lands? In times of relative calm and security these questions hardly arise: in the early eighteenth-century British governments treated their colonies, and their frontiers, with ‘salutary neglect’.
By 1748, matters were dramatically different in North America. Settler intrusion into Native American lands, apparently unfettered by provincial governments and encouraged by speculators, alongside perceived French advances, threatened to engulf the whole region in a disastrous war. Quarrelsome colonies proved unable to co-operate in self-defence, forcing ministers to centralise control of Indian and military policy. This programme, undertaken with inadequate resources and in the face of conflicting priorities, undermined colonial autonomy and provoked resistance and resentment.
When London attempted to draw a…