Sublime

Geographic frontiers are what we tend to think of when frontiers are invoked: the vast unspoiled vistas, the abundant and yet uncounted resources. All of the New World—North and South America, the Caribbean, and every island near the coasts—was a vast geographic frontier for the Beringians.

But the influence of the frontier doesn't end at the individual. The frontier also shapes the cultures of the tribes who inhabit it.

The most striking effect is forcing solidarity. Out on the fringe, short on resources and surrounded by wilderness and potential enemies, a tribe must either unite or perish. Most tribes — and certainly all the

On Europe’s Inner Asian frontier, demographic expansion long seemed as hobbled as it was in mainland North America until the 1750s.

To realize their vision, the founders created a distinct political category for the frontier: territory. The revolution had been fought by a union of states, but those states’ borders became ill-defined and even overlapped as they reached westward. Rather than dividing the frontier among the states, the republic’s leaders brokered deals by which

This vast realm of geographical ignorance reduced European activity in the Outer World to an archipelago of settlements, mines and trading depots connected by a skein of pathways kept open only by constant effort.

Frontiers can be envisioned as peaceful trade zones where valuables are exchanged for the mutual benefit of both sides, with economic need preventing overt hostilities, or as places where distrust is magnified by cultural misunderstandings, negative stereotypes, and the absence of bridging institutions.

Another important property of the frontier is its lawlessness. If the law is congealed power, its absence means freedom, and freedom is essential to how the frontier and its inhabitants operate. It's not that startups flout the law (although some of them skirt it), but rather they operate in areas where the law hasn't (yet) stifled innovation. The

For these empire-builders, the vast grassy steppe that stretched across Eurasia from Manchuria to Hungary was an open road to commercial wealth and almost limitless power. The trading cities of the Near and Middle East were a natural target.

Yet Boone’s path was strewn with obstacles. The British had set the ridge of the Appalachians as the boundary to white settlement, making Boone’s journey west a crime. The end of British rule did little to improve Boone’s standing. The founders viewed frontiersmen like him with open suspicion. They were the nation’s “refuse” (wrote Ben Franklin),