This book seeks to explain why Britain's North American colonies developed in such dissimilar social and economic directions, and ultimately why they chose different paths in the crisis of the 1770s and 1780s. Stephen Hornsby's thesis is that “the fracturing of empire was along structural faults embedded in the continent's evolving human geography” (7). He argues for a clear-cut contrast between the metropolitan-oriented islands and archipelagos of what he calls the “British Atlantic” (the West Indies, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia) and the backcountry-oriented thirteen colonies of the “American Frontier” (subsequently the United States). The author is a geographer based at the Canadian-American Center of the University of Maine, and not surprisingly, he supplies numerous, beautifully designed maps. The cartography is credited to Michael J. Hermann on the title page. Even those who disagree with Hornsby's methodology and overall conclusions may find the maps instructive.

Hornsby's subject is by no means uncharted territory, but readers expecting a thorough historiographical introduction will be disappointed. His book appears to be a critique of Jack Greene's 1988 classic Pursuits of Happiness, but Hornsby barely acknowledges his rival—except in his endnotes, where he castigates Greene for ignoring Canada. The historian who receives the most explicit attention in Hornsby's book is Frederick Jackson Turner, the important but long-discredited proponent of the “frontier thesis.” More recent historians who have emphasized the role of ideology and languages of identity are simply ignored. This makes British Atlantic, American Frontier a less than ideal choice for beginners, which is a shame because it is a wide-ranging, cleverly illustrated overview that might otherwise have found a place in many classrooms. Even if the author expected a sophisticated readership, naming—and confronting—the rival interpretations more directly would have strengthened the book, highlighting its unique contributions and enabling Hornsby to anticipate his own critics.

Economic historians have questioned the very notion of an “Atlantic system,” arguing for a more global perspective. Hornsby's description of the trade in Newfoundland dried cod (which was shipped to the Mediterranean and swapped for Iberian gold, ultimately underwriting British trade with Asia) illustrates the open-endedness of the Atlantic economy. What, then, does Hornsby mean by the “British Atlantic”? Essentially, it was an empire of islands and isolated coastal outposts (which ocean they are located in was really beside the point). In order to qualify as an “Atlantic” colony, Hornsby requires an economy that was still dominated by metropolitan investors, as well as the absence of a viable backcountry. Colonies that developed a dynamic of self-sufficiency, or which traded more with their neighbors than with ports in the metropolis, were no longer Atlantic. The “continental” colonies, with their cheap land, high wages, and increasingly diversified economies, were anomalous in the larger context of Britain's overseas empire. Ironically, the 1763 acquisitions from France—notwithstanding their Catholic, French-speaking populations—fit into Britain's “Atlantic” empire much better. The fur trade, like the Newfoundland fisheries, generated profits but very little settlement. The St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes were a series of (inland) beaches, rather than a developing frontier.

Hornsby's concept of an “Atlantic” identity, then, is substantially different from the oppositional Atlanticism that Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh (among others) have found in their studies of sailors, slaves, and other rebellious populations. For Rediker and Linebaugh, the Atlantic was a middle ground where Africans, Americans, and Europeans came together and, in some cases, made common cause around a syncretic, anti-imperial vision. In contrast, Hornsby's Anglo-Atlantic was loyalist and abjectly metropolitan in its orientation. Since his stated goal is to explain the absence of revolution in some places and its presence in others, Hornsby is compelled to discuss the issue of emotional and cultural attachment to Britain (and Britishness) and the rise of what he calls vernacular cultures in the continental colonies. These are the least persuasive parts of his book. He argues that slavery, and racial divisions, meant that the Chesapeake was profoundly unlike Britain, but he appears untroubled by the same phenomenon in the Caribbean (an integral part of his “British Atlantic”). Similarly, the religious diversity of Pennsylvania presented challenges for Anglican domination, but what of Quebec's Catholics or Jamaica's large Jewish minority?

Perhaps Thomas Jefferson's “continental” or agrarian vision, even more than Frederick Jackson Turner’s, was the decisive influence on this book. Were the thirteen colonies really defined by their backcountry? Was Atlantic commerce so unimportant? Hornsby may not have had access to April Lee Hatfield's very recent book Atlantic Virginia, but her emphasis on Virginia's oceanic dimensions should not come as a surprise; Jefferson's own life was replete with evidence of it, starting with the expensive, imported contents of his library and wine cellar. If the founders of the United States saw Britain as corrupt, they also defined their pursuit of liberty in terms of their identity as “Englishmen.” Jefferson's affirmation of American distinctiveness and self-sufficiency rested on a foundation of hypocrisy and ambivalence. Moreover, the Anglophilia of Jefferson's great enemy, Alexander Hamilton, points to a much more “Atlantic” vision of America. The polarization in the new republic between backcountry and seaboard, as well as between New England and the rest of the country, suggest that something is missing in Hornsby's analysis.