Introduction
Daniel Power
Anyone coming to the study of frontiers in history for first time will be struck immediately by diversity subject. Indeed, its geographical and chronological limits seem hardly less broad than those History itself. Within a particular field historical research, historians may have written about geographical, political, cultural, economic, linguistic, racial, or gender frontiers, name only some more popular types.1 The perceptive student well ask three basic questions. Firstly, why do there appear so many different types writing? After all, at glance frontier appears very mundane phenomenon. Secondly, how valid are comparisons between whether from same periods history? For much attraction idea ‘frontiers’ rests on assumption that can compared profitably with one another; yet write as political divisions states, whereas others is margin settled land wilderness, an entirely cultural division peoples. Thirdly, did people view societies past? Like all phenomena, contemporary subsequent views often diverge widely; but ways which envisaged tell us their concepts identity control.