War and Peace: Conflict on the Worlds Settlement Frontier

History 1B03 Dr. Weaver

David White - 1235327
5th November 2012

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War and Peace: Conflicts on the Worlds Settlement Frontiers

Boundaries between countries and different cultures have always lead to conflicts
between those at the very frontiers that separate them, nowhere is this more true than on the
settlements during the colonial era. There are five main types of conflict which are clearly
identified in Weavers work: they are, civil between the settlers and native peoples, military
government authorised defences of colonisers or assaults upon them, economic business
control over certain commodities or locations (trade stations/routes), legal acts by pioneers
to legally obtain land or resources, and finally the great conflict between the government and
its frontiersmen, a conflict which the British Empire in particular suffered from.
Physical violence during the process of colonisation took the forms of civil and
military conflict. Military conflicts took place on my frontiers most famously with the U.S.
military pushing back the First Nations, in order to make way for their settlement colonies; an
instance of this is described during the American forces annexation of Ohio, with the battle of
Fallen Timbers (1794), the victory over the first nations also forced the natives to give up
more of the land than had been originally fought over.1Civilian conflicts were much more
focused on individuals instead of conflict on a large front, like the Ohio river valley, during
the land rush in New Zealand when officials attempted to keep violence and conflict to a
minimum, some ranchers still attacked one another and also attempted to remove the other
civilian competition by destroying their livestock.2
As well as the physical violence there were many conflicts which were performed under the
auspices of law and commerce. Commercial enterprise was one of the biggest driving forces
1 John C. Weaver, The Great Land Rush: And the Making of the Modern World.
1650-1900 (London: McGill-Queens University Press, 2006), 160.
2 Weaver, 54.

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of mass colonisation, the desire to acquire goods no matter who you have to overcome
Weaver explains the main way in which barbed wire was used to cordon off areas of profit:
Wire illegally ringed millions of acres of public domain in the early 1880s.3 Legal conflicts
arose out of a necessity to provide validity, as Weaver argues: British and American
governments did not divest people of property without some due process; even the
dispossession of most first peoples engaged legal processes, though ones manipulated by
colonisers.4
Weaver argues that all these forms of conflict were also a part of a deep mistrust between the
governments of the world and their colonisers. The example of the illegally seized land by
barbed wire is counter by a reaction by the government after a few years to remove these
obstacles.5He includes in the conclusion that one of the many of the conflicts were caused by
government attempts to control their settlers, and he explicitly states that it caused: launched
distinctive regional and national political legacies. 6 Referring to the modern state system of
government distrust by business and the populace as a whole, it has influenced a lasting
distrust in certain nations for their governments; specifically the United States.
The conflicts presented in Weavers book are clear and concise, a struggle between control
and trade, and it shows a historical debate as to whether or not peoples abilities to trade and
improve the world around them without any restraint. Violence, whether government
authorised or through civil desire, is the most visible sign of conflict but there are much more
subtle conflicts such as economic domination and legal recognition, and ruling over all of
3 Weaver, 306.
4 Weaver, 13.
5 Weaver, 307.
6 Weaver, 348.

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these is a conflict between government control and indifference. The deep-seeded conflicts
started during the colonial era are some of the lasting conflicts that still exist today.