Growth of a nation: a different view

In "Measuring America ," Andro Linklater charted the creation of the states of the new republic, and he continues that illuminating examination in "The Fabric of America: How Our Borders and Boundaries Shaped the Country and Forged Our National Identity" (Walker, $25.95). This elegant history refutes Frederick Jackson Turner 's frontier thesis (that rugged individualism and westward expansion forged the American character) and argues that, from the outset, American democracy has been tied to property and ownership. "The Fabric of America" is also a fascinating biography of the surveyor Andrew Ellicott , whose work created every major boundary of the nation.

Linklater spoke from Washington, D.C.

Q. You're at the Watergate Hotel. Are there echoes there of the past you describe?

A. [Laughs.] Well, when you're writing a history of the frontier, of the boundary that encloses the country, you are also writing the history of the expansion of federal government. That is so, paradoxically, because of Thomas Jefferson, who is regarded as a champion of small government and states' rights, but who in fact linked the expansion of the US to the expansion of the federal government. In 1785 , for example, he laid the blueprint for the US Public Lands Survey, which pre-measured the land that settlers would occupy and was therefore critical to expansion. . . . So here in the Watergate, I'm acutely aware that I'm close to the heart of a very powerful government which expanded thanks to Jefferson.

Q. Why is the frontier myth so enduring?

A. Because it is the romantic dream of arriving in a place where there are no more constraints on one's freedom. I don't believe that such a total, natural freedom ever existed. One of my criticisms of Turner's theory of the frontier is that it produces this idea of a natural liberty as something that everybody will recognize. One consequence of that view is that any law is seen as an infringement of frontier liberty. The other is that people in power can believe that all the US has to do is move into another country, say "We bring you liberty," and the people there will say "Ah, now we are in our natural state." Whereas liberty is, in fact, a cultural concept. But the frontier experience itself is not exclusive to the US. It's one of the huge revolutions of the 19th century, when grasslands in particular were taken from the indigenous people and became mostly private property.

Q. As an English historian, do you bring a particular perspective to this American history?

A. I constantly feel embarrassed as an outsider writing about American history. So I try to place it in the perspective I understand as an outsider. The British emphasis on personal property was, I think, the secret virus that the first colonists carried with them. This idea that the land could be owned by an individual was an extraordinary concept, certainly for the Native Americans, who felt that they belonged to the land. But what always strikes a foreigner -- strikes me -- is the extraordinariness of the US as a unity. I first came here in 1968. I delivered a car from New York to Los Angeles, and I cannot tell you how extraordinary it was to drive for day after day and find that people spoke English, that the laws were the same, it was one country.

Q. Why do you open and close your book at the Mexican border?

A. In the decade of 9/11 and of mass immigration, when Americans talk about strengthening the frontier, you know they are talking about that formal boundary around the US. For the first time in a century, the constitutional frontier has come to the forefront and has moved beyond being a constitutional battlefield to being one of symbolism. But the boundary of the US has always been crossed by immigrants; from the 18th century, when the Germans came into Pennsylvania and Benjamin Franklin said we don't want them . The children of immigrants are the new Americans and they always have been.

Q. Has there always been anxiety about that border?

A. There's always been a curious sense of fragility about the US boundary. The great moves into imperialism at the end of the 19th century came out of this; Admiral [Alfred Thayer] Mahan saying our coastal frontiers are almost undefended, we've got to have a navy. Of course, if you have a navy, you need coaling stations in the Pacific, so you've got to have Hawaii. Part of me sees the expansion of the US continuing in that Mahan-like way. If you think of how much bigger the US is than both Canada and Mexico combined, it will always dominate, and I can imagine eventually this will become a US North American continent.

Anna Mundow, a freelance journalist living in Central Massachusetts, can be reached at ama1668@hotmail.com.