Benjamin Hoy, Assistant Professor of History, University of Saskatchewan

Benjamin Hoy is an assistant professor of history at University of Saskatchewan, where he directs the Historical GIS Lab.

Winner, Governor General's History Award for Scholarly Research
Winner, Albert B. Corey Prize, American Historical Association and the Canadian Historical Association
Winner, CHA Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History Prize, Canadian Historical Association
Winner, Best Book in Political History Prize, Canadian Historical Association

"Benjamin Hoy has written a fresh history of the Canadian-American boundary. Histories of the border have typically been written with a focus on the diplomacy of settlement: agreements to resolve conflicts between states or to prevent future disputes, the powers of diplomats to negotiate boundaries, or the establishment of sovereignty....Hoy is concerned primarily with the questions of who has been walled in and walled out and particularly to whom this wall-boundary wall-has given offence....To do this, he has undertaken extensive research in Canada and the United States examining numerous collections of Indigenous records, as well as conventional diplomatic papers. The book gives a vivid picture of how the border worked and how it affected people...[especially] Indigenous people, immigrants, or people of colour." - Francis M. Carroll, Prairie History

"A Line of Blood and Dirt is a deeply researched and sweeping narrative of the US-Canada border that underscores the centrality of Indigenous people to the development of state power in North America. Hoy provides a powerful account of how the construction and enforcement of this boundary between two nations was a critical part of those nations' shared project to dominate and dispossess Native people." - Rachel St. John, author of Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border

"An ambitious, sweeping contribution to the growing scholarly literature on the history of the American-Canadian borderlands. Benjamin Hoy emphasizes the importance of conflict, violence, disputes, and extra-legal activities in the making of the Canada-United States border from 1776 to the early twentieth century." - Ted Binnema, University of Northern British Columbia

"Benjamin Hoy analyzes the multiple constructions and innumerable contestations of the Canada-US border from 'above' (the imperial/national level) and 'below' (borderlands individuals and communities). His work deftly and thoroughly combines Indigenous, Asian, and settler histories and sources. This book will appeal to anyone who specializes in the history of North America's borderlands, Indigenous peoples, migration, or North American state formation and regulatory regimes. I can't say enough good things about this book." - Sheila McManus, University of Lethbridge

"Hoy's brilliant synthesis of the Canada-US border history...takes readers through a longue-durée sweep of the border's history—readers learn about the border's founding during the era of the Revolutionary War, the consequences of Native conceptions of space during the period of the US Civil War, attempts to rein in border violence during the late 19th century, the control of people and goods crossing the line at the turn of the 20th, and the border as a real-world geopolitical line that people dealt with on a daily basis through the 20th century. This volume is, quite simply, the most sweeping and perhaps most humane treatment of the Canada-US border's long history." - Choice

"Novel and powerful is Hoy's dedication to demonstrating how Indigenous peoples were not hapless victims of border creation and enforcement....Race, proximity to the border, the impact of broader geopolitical developments, the surprisingly potent influence of local border officials, and other factors all complicate attempts to generalize what the border meant to people or how it influenced them....The consistent inclusion of on-the-ground perspectives adds striking intimacy and humanity to what could otherwise be a macrolevel and impersonal administrative text....Hoy's analytical apparatus and methodology elevate what would already be a useful narrative of border history.....Scholars on both sides of the Canada-US border in a host of historical fields will greatly benefit from this carefully researched and powerfully written text." - Brenden W. Rensink, Canadian Journal of History

"A marvellous easy-to-follow examination of the Canadian-American borderlands from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean from the 1870s to the 1930s. It is a well-written and enjoyable narrative of how Canada and the United States created an international border across a landscape already filled with Indigenous borders....Throughout its history, the border comes more clearly into focus through its inconsistencies, impositions, contestations, and inequalities. What is clear is the centrality of Indigenous peoples to the development of the border. A Line of Blood and Dirt is...a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the stretch and limit of state power along a border and its impact on peoples." - Karl Hele, Anishinabek News