The Longest Boundary: How the US-Canadian Border’s Line Came to be Where It Is, 1763–1910

These two volumes are the only work to tell, in a way that should appeal to both specialised historians and the general reader, the story of how the course of what became the US-Canadian border was agreed. The process occurred in steps between 1763 and 1910, and took in episodes, like the 1790 Nootka Sound crisis, that had major impacts but seldom figure in accounts of Anglo-American relations. Firmly based on primary documents, both published and unpublished, the book often sheds new light by using not only the more familiar American sources but also sometimes-overlooked British ones. Often at odds with geography, the border's line might well have been different.

The chief actors are politicians and administrators, but there is a range of others, extending from First Nations chiefs to goldminers, railway entrepreneurs, prophets, and policemen. In the concluding chapter, the book's general historical approach is supplemented by assessment of the main perspectives of international relations theory. Finally, attention is drawn to small anomalies created by the boundary line.

John Dunbabin was for many decades Fellow and Tutor in Politics and Modern History at St Edmund Hall, and latterly also University Reader in International Relations.  He retired in 2004 but continued to be academically involved.  His previous books are Rural Discontent in Nineteenth-Century Britain (1974), and International Relations since 1945, Vol. 1: The Cold War (2nd. edn. 2008) and Vol. 2: The Post-Imperial Age (1994).  He has also published articles and chapters on a wide range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British, and twentieth-century world, history.