The Office of Faculty Affairs invites you to, “The Age of the Borderlands:  The Limits of American ‘Manifest Destiny,’ 1790-1845,” a Distinguished Professor inaugural lecture presented by Hall Distinguished Professor of American History, Dr. Andrew Isenberg. The lecture will take place at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, February 15 in the Alderson Room at the KU Memorial Union. The lecture will be live-streamed but in-person attendance is encouraged. The event is free and open to the public. Reception will follow after the lecture.

This lecture, drawn from Andrew Isenberg’s forthcoming book, The Age of the Borderlands:  Indians and Slaves on North American Frontiers, 1790-1840 (forthcoming, University of North Carolina Press), challenges one of the most enduring interpretations of U.S. history:  that, during the nineteenth century, Americans acted on the belief they had a “manifest destiny” to overspread the continent.  Instead, the lecture will argue that in the first half of the nineteenth century, the United States was far from being North America’s surpassing power.  The U.S. presence in its borderlands was tenuous:  until the 1840s, the British dominated the region between the western Great Lakes and Oregon, and the Spanish-Mexican empire controlled the region between Texas and California. Throughout the borderlands, the U.S. was repeatedly forced to accommodate to the presence of powerful indigenous societies.  American weakness in the region encouraged both private citizens and the federal government to experiment, win alliances and reach accommodations with indigenous people, and adapt to the environment. Rather than a place where the U.S. realized a purportedly inevitable destiny to overspread the continent, the borderlands was a site of cultural and environmental experimentation.  
 

Click HERE to register for the event.