Abstract
Reviewed by: Holly M. Karibo (hkaribo@okstate.edu ), Oklahoma State University
Wartime raises important questions about citizenship, national belonging, and who counts as a full and welcomed community member. This is particularly true at a nation’s borders, which are often framed as the “front line” between competing national interests. While the USA–Canada border was far from the bloody “front” of the First World War, Brandon R. Dimmel’s well-written book, Engaging the Line: How the Great War Shaped the Canada-US Border, demonstrates that it was nonetheless an important site of social and cultural contestation. This study focuses on how particular borderland communities on both sides of the national line reacted to the outbreak of war in Europe, and how the developments of the First World War shaped North American border policies. Dimmel details a transition from a relatively porous and “fluid zone of friendly economic and social interaction,” to one better characterized as a “high security surveillance area” heavily controlled by the state (3). The outbreak of the First World War played a direct role, Dimmel argues, in that transition.
Engaging the Line blends political, social, and cultural history in order to assess how global developments in the first decades of the twentieth century reshaped the boundary and relationship between the USA and Canada. One of the strengths of this study is its comparative approach. Dimmel focuses on three distinct borderlands communities: Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan; St. Stephen, New Brunswick and Calais, Maine; and White Rock, British Columbia and Blaine, Washington. By comparing communities in the northeast, Central Canada/Midwest, and the Pacific coast, the author successfully shows how local customs, culture, and history shaped community members’ responses to the outbreak of war. For example, a perusal of local newspapers in each region shows divergent reactions to the outbreak of war. In Windsor, a community closely integrated with its US neighbour, local media reports initially expressed a decidedly “anti-war sentiment” that mirrored reactions in Detroit (34). While this anti-war sentiment faded fairly quickly in Windsor, and US neutrality created new tensions between US and Canadian border residents, the initial reaction by Windsor residents suggests close cultural linkages between Detroit and Windsor residents. In contrast, in the recently settled British communities along the Pacific coast a belief in the need to defend the British Empire and its dominions led to much stronger public support of the war from the start.
If communities responded to the outbreak of war differently, they also had different responses to the imposition of state power that accompanied it. In the Windsor/Detroit and St. Stephen/Calais communities, deeply rooted transnational ties and cross-border cultures made resistance to the expansion of state power much more common. Border inspectors, for example, sometimes took a more lax enforcement approach in their daily interactions, afraid of negative reactions from local community members. Though some were willing to accept new regulations as part of the necessity of wartime (particularly after news reports of alleged plots by enemy aliens surfaced), many local community members saw expanding border regulations as “meddling by outsiders who … ‘know nothing of border conditions’” (111). In contrast, the Anglo-settler White Rock/Blaine border communities lacked the generations-deep cross-border ties that had developed further east, and were instead shaped by a perceived need to prevent “undesirables” from crossing the border. Debates over resource industries, Asian immigration, and alcohol sometimes pitted members of the White Rock/Blaine community against one another. In these debates, immigration controls were more likely framed as an important way to control unwanted people, goods, and activities, rather than as impediments to a transnational border culture. As a result, in contrast to Windsor/Detroit and St. Stephen/Calais, there was no protest over the stricter customs and immigration standards put in place during the war.
While Dimmel successfully uncovers the ways in which racial perceptions shaped relations in Pacific communities, a more detailed analysis of racial and ethnic relations in the Detroit/Windsor and St. Stephen/Calais region would have strengthened his analysis. It is certain that residents in those border cities were also concerned about so-called undesirable immigrants and crime across borders. Further, the First World War also brought the migration of thousands of African Americans into border cities like Detroit. Did this have an effect on debates over border-crossing and the racial make-up of border communities? A more robust analysis of notions of race and ethnicity across the USA and Canada would have added to the complexity of the analysis. The inclusion of maps for each region would also have strengthened the comparative angle of the book. Finally, at times Dimmel’s case-study approach led the analysis to read a bit choppily. An expanded conclusion discussing the study’s broader implications on our understanding of national boundaries would help tie the author’s findings together in a more effective manner. Despite these shortcomings, the rich detail of this book and the stories it tells will appeal to readers interested in the First World War, the North American borderlands, and local histories.