Center and Peripheries: Locating Maine\u27s History

What is the place of Maine history? Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor uses the misfortunes of George Ulmer, commander of militia volunteers in Eastport during the War of 1812y, to argue that historians should refocus their view of the past by paying attention to places traditionally deemed “marginal” or “peripheral” to the larger story of American history. Professor Taylor points out that, as a borderland, Maine has long been an international crossroads—an area of dense cultural and economic interaction—and, therefore, should be at the center of our quest for understanding past experience. A professor of history at the University of California, Davis, Alan Taylor is the author of Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820 and William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic