Synopses & Reviews
A Companion to Colonial America consists of twenty-three original essays by expert historians on the key issues and topics in American colonial history. Each essay surveys the scholarship and prevailing interpretations in these key areas, discussing the differing arguments and assessing their merits. In certain fields, such as politics and religion, the essays cover debates and approaches over the better part of the last century. More recent fields such as migration and gender have a narrower interpretive history, but receive the same comprehensive treatment. Essays on newly emerging fields such as ecology, and a closing summary essay look ahead to the future of Colonial American studies. The contributors are the best in their field and have collaborated to produce an invaluable reference work for American historians, students, and readers of American colonial history.
Review
"An indispensable survey of a generation of scholarship on early American history. The continent-wide approach is breathtaking – a testimony to the expanding horizons of American historians."
Gary B. Nash, University of California Los Angeles "This authoritative and well produced volume provides an overview of the state of play in the ever expanding field of colonial American history. This valuable reference work provides a comprehensive and thought provoking entree into a sophisticated field of historical enquiry." The Journal of the Historical Association
Synopsis
A Companion to Colonial America consists of twenty-three original essays by expert historians on the key issues and topics in American colonial history. Each essay surveys the scholarship and prevailing interpretations in these key areas, discussing the differing arguments and assessing their merits.
- Coverage includes politics, religion, migration, gender, ecology, and many others.
About the Author
Daniel Vickers is Professor of History at the University of California San Diego. He is the author of Farmers and Fisherman: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts (1994).
Table of Contents
About the Contributors viiIntroduction x
1 Pre-Contact: The Evidence from Archaeology 1
David G. Anderson and Marvin T. Smith
2 The Origins of Transatlantic Colonization 25
Carole Shammas
3 Ecology 44
John Brooke
4 Migration and Settlement 76
Ned Landsman
5 Empire 99
Richard R. Johnson
6 Indian History During the English Colonial Era 118
James H. Merrell
7 African Americans 138
Philip D. Morgan
8 Economy 172
Margaret Newell
9 Women and Gender 194
Carol Karlsen
10 Children and Parents 236
Holly Brewer
11 Class 259
Greg Nobles
12 Colonial Politics 288
Alan Tully
13 Regionalism 311
Michael Zuckerman
14 Consumption 334
Cary Carson
15 Religion 366
Marilyn Westerkamp
16 Secular Culture in Search of an Early American Enlightenment 389
Darren Staloff
17 Borderlands 408
Daniel H. Usner, Jr.
18 Comparisons: The Caribbean 425
Verene Shepherd and Carleen Payne
19 Comparisons: New Spain 451
Robert Ferry
20 Comparisons: New France 469
Allan Greer
21 Comparisons: Atlantic Canada 489
Peter Pope
22 Causes of the American Revolutions 508
Sylvia Frey
23 Postscript: Large Questions in a Very Large Place 530
Edward Countryman
Index 541