Local Identity and Authority in a Disputed Hinterland: The Pennsyvlania-Maryland Border in the 1730s
I N THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, most English colonists on the North American mainland were uncertain about the physical limits of provincial jurisdiction. Settlers on the frontiers of the British colonies often found themselves on lands claimed by the French, by an Indian tribe, by an adjacent province, or by a neighbor. Overlapping jurisdiction undercut the very foundation of authority and frequently resulted in open violence. For local inhabitants, provincial leaders, agents, and imperial administrators, such conflicts were common, lengthy, and complex. For much of the hundred years prior to the American Revolution, these controversies reflected the dramatic importance colonists attached to the related problems of extending authority, defining territorial limits, and negotiating collective identities. The jurisdictional confusion and violent episodes that punctuated life in the disputed hinterlands of colonial British America also highlighted distinctive provincial and local perspectives on authority. While leaders of adjoining colonies sought to extend formal provincial authority into regions where their claims overlapped, the inhabitants of this hinterland found ethnicity, kinship, and socioeconomic status to be far more important sources of legitimacy for leadership selection and