by Michael KimaidThis
article is a comparative study of how the Ohio territory and the nation
of Liberia were mapped and settled in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries. Despite the great distance separating the two, both were
perceived of similar minds: early Americans who believed that their
interests could be realized through a conscious manipulation of
geography and the people who previously inhabited the land they coveted.
Ultimately, both Ohio and Liberia are demonstrative of early
conceptions of state and nation that would eventually give rise to the
territorial empires of the nineteenth century. Prior to the development
of geographical systems that accounted for land at the expense of the
people who lived there, empires existed as centers and peripheries of
power. By replacing the vague borderlands that had allowed indigenous
people a degree of self-determination in their exchanges with an
imperial presence with defined and precise borderlands, processes of
removal and ultimately subjugation were made possible on a scale that
increased the power and wealth of those who drew the maps at the expense
of those who had previously laid claim to it.
Read Article >>