Instruments of incorporation: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American frontier, 1875--1910

During the last third of the nineteenth century, Texas and western Canada experienced parallel social and economic transformations, characterized by the massive expansion of railroads and the rapid increase of white settlements. To smooth the advent of industrial modernization in these resource-rich hinterlands and to pull the regions more tightly into the political orbits of Austin and Ottawa, officials in each capital turned to rural police for assistance, at virtually the same moment in the early 1870s. This dissertation uses these famed constabularies—the Texas Rangers and the North-West Mounted Police—as a frame through which the consider the complex process of incorporating North American frontiers and its consequences for rural people.; The Mounties and the Rangers performed four central duties in establishing state sovereignty and promoting economic development at the edges of the Great Plains. First, the police subjugated indigenous groups by denying Indian access to the bison and forcing natives to accept confinement on reservations. The constabularies then facilitated the commodification of frontier resources by breaking the hold of Mexicans and Metis on natural assets such as land, cattle, and minerals, in the process creating a mixed-blood proletariat. In the 1880s the two forces sped the rise of bonanza ranching by defeating the challenge of homesteaders to range lands coveted by cattlemen and ranching syndicates. Finally, the police broke turn-of-the-century strikes at the largest coal mines in Texas and Alberta, ensuring a steady supply of fuel for smelters and locomotives.; In shifting the focus of incorporation from the core to the periphery, this dissertation casts new light on the process of frontier absorption and its implications for people living on the margins. However, in situating the insurgencies of such groups in historical context this thesis resists the temptation to romanticize them as noble victims trapped in a losing struggle against the expansion of capital. Moreover, the comparative perspective allows for the telling of a more common North American history while serving also to challenge the narratives of historical exceptionalism that characterize the scholarship on Texas, the Canadian prairies, and the West in general.