Settler states out of the borderlands: Patrick Thomas Forde, Forging the Borderlands: Sovereignty, Conflict, and State Formation West of the Great Lakes, 1860s-1870s, MA dissertation, University of Calgary, 2026 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler states out of the borderlands: Patrick Thomas Forde, Forging the Borderlands: Sovereignty, Conflict, and State Formation West of the Great Lakes, 1860s-1870s, MA dissertation, University of Calgary, 2026

19Jul26

Abstract: This thesis examines the transformation of the Great Lakes borderlands in the 1860s and 1870s, a period in which overlapping claims to sovereignty gave way to the consolidation of centralized settler states in the North American West. In the western Great Lakes Borderlands–encompassing present-day Minnesota and Manitoba–Indigenous nations, the United States, and the British Empire contested authority, and irreconcilable understandings of sovereignty produced sustained conflict and instability. Focusing on the American Civil War, the Dakota War of 1862, and the Red River Rebellion as interconnected crises, the thesis argues that these conflicts accelerated the consolidation of federal and imperial authority by pushing the United States and the British Empire (later Canada) toward centralized control over contested western territories and Indigenous populations. U.S. suppression of Dakota resistance eradicated Indigenous sovereignty claims in Minnesota, while the Dakota flight across the 49th parallel exposed the fragility of imperial authority. In Rupert’s Land, the inability of the Hudson’s Bay Company to enforce order revealed the limits of company rule and contributed to the transfer of political authority in the Northwest from a commercial monopoly to the expanding Canadian state. The resulting resistance in Red River emerged after the transfer of Rupert’s Land to Canada threatened the political autonomy and landholding practices of the Métis, a distinct Indigenous and mixed-ancestry community that had long dominated the region’s fur trade economy. Although the resistance was contained through a negotiated incorporation into the new Canadian dominion, many of the promised protections quickly eroded as settlement expanded westward. In the years that followed, Canadian officials increasingly used treaties as instruments of settler colonialism expansion, facilitating settlement while gradually subordinating Indigenous and Métis autonomy across the Northwest. Ultimately, this thesis argues that the Great Lakes borderlands served as a crucible for continental change, where Indigenous resistance, settler-state expansion, and racial hierarchies reshaped political and spatial orders. By linking regional conflicts to transnational processes, it demonstrates that the consolidation of the United States and Canada emerged not as isolated national projects, but as interconnected responses to shared challenges of sovereignty, migration, and control.

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