Synopses & Reviews
With this book, Allan Kulikoff offers a sweeping new interpretation of the origins and development of the small farm economy in Britain's mainland American colonies. Examining the lives of farmers and their families, he tells the story of immigration to the colonies, traces patterns of settlement, analyzes the growth of markets, and assesses the impact of the Revolution on small farm society.
Beginning with the dispossession of the peasantry in early modern England, Kulikoff follows the immigrants across the Atlantic to explore how they reacted to a hostile new environment and its Indian inhabitants. He discusses how colonists secured land, built farms, and bequeathed those farms to their children. Emphasizing commodity markets in early America, Kulikoff shows that without British demand for the colonists' crops, settlement could not have begun at all. Most important, he explores the destruction caused during the American Revolution, showing how the war thrust farmers into subsistence production and how they only gradually regained their prewar prosperity.
Review
Kulikoff has undertaken a project of enormous value to historical inquiry.
American Studies
Review
An extraordinary book, rich in detail and deep in analysis. . . . [with] an exquisite prologue.
Choice
Review
Kulikoff's study will please readers with its erudite survey of important scholarship, but it may also provoke continuing arguments.
Journal of American History
Review
A significant contribution.
Journal of Southern History
Synopsis
A sweeping new interpretation of the origins and development of the small farm economy of Britain's American colonies. Examining the lives of farmers and their wives, children, servants, and slaves, Alan Kulikoff tells the story of immigration to the colonies, traces patterns of settlement, analyzes the growth of market relations among settlers, and assesses the impact of the Revolution on small farm society.
About the Author
Allan Kulikoff is professor of history at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. His previous books include Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800.