Bridging the Continental Divide

December 2009

Arizona State Museum ethnohistorian Michael Brescia has co-authored a new and fresh interpretive history of North America.

Brescia and his co-author, John C. Super of West Virginia University, want their readers to think of North America not in terms of the traditional nation-state, which tends to favor U.S. history, but rather in terms of the trans-national forces that have driven continental integration since the sixteenth century. "North America: An Introduction (2008, University of Toronto Press) examines the broad sweep of changes and continuities in the North American experience within a comparative framework, sensitive to continental similarities and differences," says Brescia. "Employing this thematic rather than strict chronological approach, my co-author and I evaluate topics such as Native American society, continental diplomacy, church-state relations, and free trade and labor." Special attention is given to the political institutions and economic structures that have fostered trans-national cooperation and continental integration over time, particularly how the ebb and flow of peoples, goods, and ideas have reconstituted notions of solidarity among different constituencies in Mexico, Canada, and the United States. The social and cultural dimensions of discord and conflict also are examined.

Through an integrative, thematic approach to studying the North American past, readers will be able to better discern patterns of change and continuity over time within each topic. According to Brescia, past histories have fallen short because of their focus on single nations, as if they exist independent of each other. "Market forces push publishing houses to privilege nation-state history over broader, more comparative histories. Standard university and college curricula across the United States, Mexico, and Canada tend to emphasize the particular, the unique, the exceptional dimensions of the American, Canadian, or Mexican historical experiences. The problem is especially acute here in the United States where U.S. history often is depicted in very isolated terms. Our book asks readers to think comparatively in order to appreciate the similarities and convergences of our shared, continental past."

Brescia is associate curator of ethnohistory in ASM's Office of Ethnohistorical Research, and he holds an appointment in the department of history at the University of Arizona. His research and teaching interests include colonial Mexico, Spanish and Mexican water rights, religion, and comparative North America, as well as archives and rare book libraries, paleography, and translation.

North America: An Introduction is available at Native Goods, the Arizona State Museum store, at the University of Arizona bookstore, and through the University of Toronto Press.

This icon indicates link opens in a new window.