Book Description
This epic history compares the empires built by Spain and Britain in the Americas, from Columbus’s arrival in the New World to the end of Spanish colonial rule in the early nineteenth century. J. H. Elliott, one of the most distinguished and versatile historians working today, offers us history on a grand scale, contrasting the worlds built by Britain and by Spain on the ruins of the civilizations they encountered and destroyed in North and South America.
Elliott identifies and explains both the similarities and differences in the two empires’ processes of colonization, the character of their colonial societies, their distinctive styles of imperial government, and the independence movements mounted against them. Based on wide reading in the history of the two great Atlantic civilizations, the book sets the Spanish and British colonial empires in the context of their own times and offers us insights into aspects of this dual history that still influence the Americas.
Customer Reviews:
England and Spain in the Western Hemisphere.......2007-09-25
This was an eye-opener for me as I knew very little on Spain's American territories, besides brief descriptions of some of the conquistadors such as Cortes and Pizzarro. What Elliott has done in this book is to show the comparisons and contrasts between England's New World Colonies and Spain's. There are many fascinating facets underlaying the reasons for acquiring these territories, how both sides viewed their mission and goals, and how they governed them. This is without a doubt a remarkable book that revealed a lot for me.
The first colonization was begun by the Spanish in the early 16th Century. The English made their first successful attempt in the early 17th Century. Both South and North America posed different challenges for both governments, i.e. the size of the indigenous populations, the geography and climate, natural resources and so forth. For me, the real fascination was learning more about the Spanish colonies and the establishment of the viceroyalties of New Spain (based in Mexico City) and Peru (based in Lima) with additional ones developing over time. The interaction with the natives, the attempts at Christianization, trade, and many other aspects of Spain's colonization were quite enlightening.
Being more familiar with United States history, I felt more familiar with the material covered on England's planting of settlers in Jamestown and later in New England. However, the real education was in Elliott's efforts to show how each of these two powers (Spain and England) confronted the realities and challenges of establishing their presence in these very different regions. The differences were often quite stark. Some of the points of contrast that most differentiated the two powers included each nation's attitude towards the Indians (including the attempts or lack of evangelization) and the extent of imperial bureaucracy brought over from the mother countries.
Elliott also describes how world events had helped to shape and or guide the developments that occurred in both country's territories. The Reformation, the British Commonwealth under Cromwell, the Restoration, the Glorious Revolution, the French and Indian War, the French Revolution and so forth, all served as factors in shaping the events that transpired in North and South America. The role of various monarchs, religious, military and political leaders, as well as indigenous leaders, are also discussed.
Elliott does try to take an even-handed approach in acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of both government's endeavors. Of course it goes without saying that the notion of empire, with the connotations of exploitation of natives and their cultures, is unpopular in most peoples minds nowadays. Yes, it was and remains a blot on the records of all nations that engaged in replacing the livelihoods and cultures (sometimes more like extermination) of indigenous peoples, or those who engaged in the slave trade, but we must keep in mind that we have to try to keep modern standards in check for historical purposes.
This is such a broad subject that I find it hard to even begin to touch on more specific details found in this book; I'm just trying to outline the broader contours of Elliott's book. Having some introduction to this time period will help you, but you need not be an expert on this particular topic. An illuminating read.
Engaging Comparative History .......2007-01-03
This is comparative history at its very best. Elliott superbly describes and chronicles the history of the British and Spanish exploration and colonization of the Americas, as well as the process whereby both the British American and Spanish American colonial societies brought about their independence from the imperial governments. It is a comprehensive, detailed, and yet highly readable overview of the political, economic, social, military, and religious forces at play in the Americas during the time period. Elliott goes beyond the telling of historical events and facts, to provide analysis and interpretation of why history unfolded as it did. The writing is excellent and clearly reflects a highly learned historian who has the ability to tell history in a an engaging manner. His juxtaposition and comparison of British and Spanish America in a single volume results in a very interesting and stimulating way to learn about the two empires. The book contains very attractive end papers, a number of excellent maps and numerous color plates. Very highly recommended.
A essential addition to a great history.......2006-12-17
Elliott delivers the masterpiece that those who study the Atlantic World have been waiting for. The idea of studying history from the perspective of the Atlantic has been growing in popularity and worth taking a further look at. Britain and Spain established mammoth empires and Elliot looks at their rise and fall. He also considers other powers including the French and Dutch but focuses mainly on the first two mentioned. The age of exploration is put in context and in true Atlantic fashion the slave trade and development in Latin America are very important. The revolutions of the Atlantic world are very clearly explained in this book and Elliott leaves you wondering where else this field can go. Elliott writes very well and this book is a must read for those who want to consider how the Atlantic world impacted Europe and the United States.
Challenging Theory.......2006-08-27
This is an excellent book for anyone interested in the history of the Americas, colonial history or comparative studies of the American countries. Although it is based largely on secondary sources it reflects the enormous amount of work that the author has carried out in his previous books on Spain. The most interestin feature of the book is how Elliott points out the similarities between the British and Spanish Empires in the Americas; a fact that most historians have previously tended to ignore.
An important contribution.......2006-05-10
Colonialism and Empire are the two most important subjects in history, no other subject exists without them and the discovery of the New World and its repopulation/depopulation is one fo the great episodes of human history. The colonies in America can be easily put into two categories, the Anglo ones and the Catholic ones. Despite small French and Portugues and Dutch intrusions, the overall lesson is one of difference between these two great naval powers and the makeup of their colonial systems.
We are given here, perhaps for the first time in a cogent work, a true understanding of the nature of the two regimes. ON the one hand we see the brutality and discrimination of the Spanish empire. How they lopped of hands for gold, how they were anti-Jewish. How they were Catholic. But we see in them a very different mentality, that of mixing with native peoples to in fact create a whole new ethnic group. In the English colonies we see the opposite, early contacts with Indians dont suceed and the colonies immediatly set to bring over women(because of religious diveristy and rebellion against England) and in this we see the creation of the modern system of North and South America.
A wonderful and very insightful book that should be of interest for any historian of the period or anyone interested.
Seth J. Frantzman
Book Description
When the British wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the truth about its thriving,
polyglot society began to disappear into myths about an island purchased for 24 dollars and a cartoonish peg-legged governor. But the story of the Dutch colony of New Netherland was merely lost, not destroyed: 12,000 pages of its records–recently declared a national treasure–are now being translated. Drawing on this remarkable archive, Russell Shorto has created a gripping narrative–a story of global sweep centered on a wilderness called Manhattan–that transforms our understanding of early America.
The Dutch colony pre-dated the “original” thirteen colonies, yet it seems strikingly familiar. Its capital was cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic, and its citizens valued free trade, individual rights, and religious freedom. Their champion was a progressive, young lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck, who emerges in these pages as a forgotten American patriot and whose political vision brought him into conflict with Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director of the Dutch colony. The struggle between these two strong-willed men laid the foundation for New York City and helped shape American culture.
The Island at the Center of the World uncovers a lost world and offers a surprising new perspective on our own.
Customer Reviews:
Little known yet influential colony.......2007-09-23
In this groundbreaking book on America's early history we are given a treat and shown how much of our history came not only from the English Puritans but by the Dutch colony of New Netherland. I was amazed to read that this little known colony has had such a profound effect on the United States and yet is little studied or referenced.
Shorto does a wonderful job in illustrating that ramifications of the free thinking and freely governed society that was the origins of the hub of early America: Manhattan. The "melting pot" that was this colony has certainly defined the US as a country today. Other evidence of the long forgotten Dutch colony: Bronck (Bronx), Breuckele (Brooklyn), Jonker's Land (Yonkers), Roode Eylandt (Rhode Island), Nieuw Haarlem (Harlem), Greenwyck (Greenwich Village) among others.
Additionally such well known streets as Wall Street (a Dutch street bordering a wall that was built to keep the invading English out), Broadway Street (obviously, a Dutch street that was broad). The first district attorney can be traced back to the Dutch schout (van der Donck in this case), which was the colonies law officer. No other countries employed such an officer except the Dutch at the time. Some other trivial associations: koeckjes (cookies), or koolsla (the favorite American BBQ side dish cole slaw).
Shorto does a fantastic job in not only illustrating the importance of this little known colony but in also bringing to life the history of the era and politics of the European countries of the time. I would definitely recommend.
5 stars.
An island to make New Yorkers proud.......2007-08-27
This is a well written history of the Dutch settlement in New York. A great deal of the information has been recently uncovered. New Yorkers will recognize in themselves with pride, the inheritance received from these early settlers.
Not There Yet........2007-08-10
This could have been a 5 star book about a rarely mentioned topic. The author put together a concise work into the history of the growth from New Amsterdam to New York. He chronicles the era of the first Dutch settlers & draws from a wealth of unique first hand infoormation. The main point of the book is how important New Amsterdam was in the growth of the USA. But, although I personally agree with his thesis, he did a mediocre job of proving it. The person of Adraien van der Donck, a lawyer is woven into the story as a very influential person. But, the data given is scanty & the connections are questionable. The other theme, a refreshing one is the deep racial & ethnic tolerance the Dutch appear to have had. A third theme is the role of government which under the Dutch was not a monarchy unlike most European ones at that time.It is a vivid & entertaining story that leaves the reader a bit frustrated. You keep asking yourself, when is the author going to connect the dots? Lastly, the grammatical errors were far too numerous for a semi-scholarly book as this. I recommend it as a good read, but overall it only gets 3 stars.
Dutch.......2007-08-02
This book was sent to my great nephew...we are Dutch descent and many
of our ancestors are mentioned in this fascinating history. Glad to get it at such a reasonable price.
Elderhostel is right!.......2007-08-02
The reading list for the Elderhostel ONE LOCK AT A TIME: THE LIVING HISTORY OF THE ERIE CANAL starts with this book, and highly recommends it, as does our U.S. lecturer. It's not an "easy read," but worth the time and effort. I learned much about the Dutch in our country and their effects on our lives, continuing to this day.
Book Description
The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800 gathers an international team of historians to present the first comprehensive account of the central themes in the histories of Britain, British America, and the British Caribbean seen in Atlantic perspective: the state, empire, migration, the economy, religion, race, class, gender, politics, and slavery. Together, the essays will be a primary resource for students and teachers and a stimulus to researchers in British, American, imperial, and Atlantic history more generally.
Customer Reviews:
Comprehensive, but light on specifics.......2004-06-29
The essays in this book do a wonderful job of introducing the reader to the complexities of the Atlantic world. It has become increasingly difficult to think of England in this era without also recalling events in North and South America and the Carribean, not to mention Africa. However, the book suffers at times from its style. Each essay is written by a different historian and, although well researched, the book sometimes suffers from incontinuities and repetition. All in all, if you are interested in the wider world during this period, this is a great introduction that will likely leave you hungering for more.
Book Description
In a landmark work of history, Russell Shorto presents astonishing information on the founding of our nation and reveals in riveting detail the crucial role of the Dutch in making America what it is today.
In the late 1960s, an archivist in the New York State Library made an astounding discovery: 12,000 pages of centuries-old correspondence, court cases, legal contracts, and reports from a forgotten society: the Dutch colony centered on Manhattan, which predated the thirteen “original” American colonies. For the past thirty years scholar Charles Gehring has been translating this trove, which was recently declared a national treasure. Now, Russell Shorto has made use of this vital material to construct a sweeping narrative of Manhattan’s founding that gives a startling, fresh perspective on how America began.
In an account that blends a novelist’s grasp of storytelling with cutting-edge scholarship, The Island at the Center of the World strips Manhattan of its asphalt, bringing us back to a wilderness island—a hunting ground for Indians, populated by wolves and bears—that became a prize in the global power struggle between the English and the Dutch. Indeed, Russell Shorto shows that America’s founding was not the work of English settlers alone but a result of the clashing of these two seventeenth century powers. In fact, it was Amsterdam—Europe’s most liberal city, with an unusual policy of tolerance and a polyglot society dedicated to free trade—that became the model for the city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan. While the Puritans of New England were founding a society based on intolerance, on Manhattan the Dutch created a free-trade, upwardly-mobile melting pot that would help shape not only New York, but America.
The story moves from the halls of power in London and The Hague to bloody naval encounters on the high seas. The characters in the saga—the men and women who played a part in Manhattan’s founding—range from the philosopher Rene Descartes to James, the Duke of York, to prostitutes and smugglers. At the heart of the story is a bitter power struggle between two men: Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director of the Dutch colony, and a forgotten American hero named Adriaen van der Donck, a maverick, liberal-minded lawyer whose brilliant political gamesmanship, commitment to individual freedom, and exuberant love of his new country would have a lasting impact on the history of this nation.
Customer Reviews:
The Island at The Center of The World,.......2007-09-14
We all grew up in our American history classes with the image of peg-legged old Peter Stuyvesant ruling chaotically over the short-lived Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. They were a sorry lot, these Dutch, who didn't understand what they had on Manhattan, an island that awaited the organizational verve of the English to finally get under way toward its present greatness.
Would you believe that this view of the Dutch is a lot of poppycock? According to author Russell Shorto, it is that and worse. His book THE ISLAND AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD, published by Doubleday, tells the story of the Dutch colonization of Manhattan and large portions of the land around that island in the seventeenth century. Because the actual Dutch records of that colonization have only recently been unearthed from libraries, we've more or less accepted the view of Dutch incompetence that has been foisted upon us by history. That is, by English history. As Winston Churchill famously remarked, history is written by the victors, and in this case, the English won the day when they laid a naval blockade on Manhattan in 1664 and took over the colony. According to Shorto, that triumph resulted in a very skewed and inaccurate presentation of what the Dutch achieved in Manhattan, and therefore of what American culture owes them.
The main character is, of course, Peter Stuyvesant, the man who surrendered to the English. When he arrived in New Amsterdam in 1647, the town had just a few hundred citizens and was located at the very southern tip of Manhattan Island, around the area of present-day Battery Park. It was low, rude and dirty. Stuyvesant was the representative of the Dutch West India Company, which had founded the colony. Subject to very poor leadership, the town was in need of a clear-headed, strong-minded leader, and Stuyvesant certainly was both of those. He was also a company man, and the idea of the citizens ruling themselves in any sort of way was simply beneath Stuyvesant's notice. It would be madness, the antithesis to the seventeenth century idea that God grants the right to lead only to the right sort of person and that all the rest should follow. The leveling sentiments of the American Revolution were one hundred thirty years away in the unforeseeable future.
But there were a few others in New Amsterdam who viewed themselves as viable contenders to lead the colony, and one of these was Adrian Van der Donck. An educated attorney who had taken full advantage of the new liberalisms of thought offered in Dutch universities by such as Descartes, Grotius and Spinoza, he had arrived in the colony some years before. The Dutch were already known for their tolerance of modes of thought and behavior other than their own. A great trading people, a people of the sea, the Dutch had for centuries been aware of the diversity of peoples elsewhere in the world. Amsterdam itself was noted for its polyglot, diverse culture, and Van der Donck had seen all this.
Van der Donck is the second protagonist of this remarkable book, and it is the ongoing struggle between these two men that fills its pages. Van der Donck and some others plagued Stuyvesant for years by pleading the case before him, and then before the Dutch Estates General in Amsterdam, that the Dutch West India Company's rule was stifling to the citizens of the colony and, worse, lousy for business. Stuyvesant, in their view, ruled badly with an iron-hand. Commerce was stifled by his authoritarian rigidity. The rising English and Swedish power in the region, based in the sizable colonies that those two countries had established nearby, was a continuing threat. Van der Donck and his friends presented brief after brief to the Estates in an attempt to break the Dutch West India Company's autocratic hold over Manhattan and to replace it with a more republican-style government devoted to open trade.
They made remarkable progress with this idea and indeed the Dutch government had arrived at the moment of voiding the West India Company's contract in the colony. But ultimately these efforts failed because of England's Oliver Cromwell and his wish to break up the Dutch influence on the seas. It began as a trade war and then became a real one when the First Anglo-Dutch War broke out in July, 1652. Van der Donck and the Dutch West India Company suddenly changed in the eyes of the Dutch government. War made the company's seeming stability in the colony appear all-important. It also made them think that Van der Donck perhaps was not really the progressive man of brilliant ideas for commerce and governance, but rather a dangerous agent of change who could ruin The Netherlands' efforts to defend its own territory.
Stuyvesant was back in charge. Van der Donck was out in the cold.
But the long-term effects of his efforts lasted beyond the war and beyond the Dutch colony itself. They resulted in much that became very important to the development of the American colonies and, finally, the United States. "Van der Donck's dream became real in a way he never imagined," Shorto writes. "The structure he helped win for the place grounded it in Dutch tolerance and diversity, just as he hoped it would, which in turn touched off the island's rapid growth and increased the influx of settlers from around Europe, just as he predicted. What he didn't predict was that the English would appreciate this fact, and maintain the structure, and that it would support a future culture of unprecedented energy and vitality and creativity."
One of the most interesting stories in this book is that of what happened to the documents that were kept by the Dutch colony and its officers. This trove of papers that go so far in explaining the complexity of the issues of New Netherland lay unnoticed for a few hundred years in various libraries. Only in the 1970's, when the translation of the papers to English finally began, did the importance of the Dutch influence in New York begin to get truly clarified.
The last chapter of THE ISLAND AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD is a little coda in which Shorto tells of the journey of the records of the colony over two and a half centuries, in the New World and the Old, always out of the public eye.
It is a riveting small essay on great good fortune. If you do not value librarians and those who care about the written record, you should read this chapter. It will certainly set you straight because these New Netherland papers survived through swashbuckling derring-do and because of a deep concern for history on the part of a very few individuals over the centuries.
The records were neglected, subject to mould, fire, wars and general indifference. But they remain more or less intact now because of the lucky interest of the few individuals that seemed to understand what they had in hand. Without them, the records would have perished, this book wouldn't have been written and the ongoing revelations of the true importance of the Dutch Manhattan colony would have been lost to us.
For those interested in why New York is New York, and why the United States developed the way it did, those efforts - and this book - are invaluable.
Terence Clarke is a novelist, journalist and film maker who writes about the arts at [...]
The Island at the Center of the World.......2007-01-13
Exellent read and well documented. The book is intended for those who are interested in the early beginnings of the New World. The author makes the point that the history that we are taught was written by the English and so is slanted to that audience. To understand the significance of the Dutch contributions it would be useful to also understand the competition between English and the Dutch for dominance in the merchantile development.
The Island at the Center of the World.......2006-11-11
Excellent and well writen documentary of a little-known period of the development of the United States. It shows the influence of the Dutch settlers in establising the true melting pot. No other nation provided the guidelines for the creation of a true democracy as the Dutch did it in Manhattan!
The Island at the Center of the World.......2006-11-10
There is a danger in reading this book. You will find yourself buying it for all of your intelligent friends who love to read stories of historical characters that are portrayed in exciting adventure settings and come alive to you in the telling. The entire making of this book with the back story of finding the New Amsterdam records hidden away in Albany and the translater/interpreter of those documents; made the story even more intriquing to me. I must buy you the book, my friend, I cannot part with my own copy.
Remembering The Forgotten Colony.......2006-10-02
In 1638, Jan Snedegar is noted as operating a tavern or inn on Long Island. A 19th-century incarnation of the Snedecor Inn is still standing, in Connetquot River State Park Preserve. I am one of his descendants, 14 generations later. Snedecor was my mother's maiden name; she grew up on Long Island.
Thus my bias and thus my fifth star. The story is not complete here. To place the colony in full context would require several more volumes. But what there is, is very good. The version I obtained at the library was the large print, which lacked the detailed chapter notes and index -- go for the regular print edition unless you really need the big font. That is one reason for denying a fifth star. Another is, as has been stated by previous reviewers, an incomplete acknowledgement of the role of Rhode Island in the matter of freedom of worship in early America. (Context again.)
Nonetheless, it is true that when it became New York the Dutch remained. The idea of the Bill of Rights originated with New York; the Dutch essentially named the places in downstate. Their influence remains today: here I am!
Learn more. Read the book.
Book Description
More than 100,000 Ulster Presbyterians of Scottish origin migrated to the American colonies in the six decades prior to the American Revolution, the largest movement of any group from the British Isles to British North America in the eighteenth century. Drawing on a vast store of archival materials, The People with No Name is the first book to tell this fascinating story in its full, transatlantic context. It explores how these people--whom one visitor to their Pennsylvania enclaves referred to as ''a spurious race of mortals known by the appellation Scotch-Irish''--drew upon both Old and New World experiences to adapt to staggering religious, economic, and cultural change. In remarkably crisp, lucid prose, Patrick Griffin uncovers the ways in which migrants from Ulster--and thousands like them--forged new identities and how they conceived the wider transatlantic community.
The book moves from a vivid depiction of Ulster and its Presbyterian community in and after the Glorious Revolution to a brilliant account of religion and identity in early modern Ireland. Griffin then deftly weaves together religion and economics in the origins of the transatlantic migration, and examines how this traumatic and enlivening experience shaped patterns of settlement and adaptation in colonial America. In the American side of his story, he breaks new critical ground for our understanding of colonial identity formation and of the place of the frontier in a larger empire. The People with No Name will be indispensable reading for anyone interested in transatlantic history, American Colonial history, and the history of Irish and British migration.
Customer Reviews:
Colleague.......2007-07-03
If you want a less academic-sounding book on the subject, it is hard to find a better book than that which was penned by James Leyburn back in 1962. On the other hand, comparing Griffin's book to James Webb's romantic depiction of the Scots-Irish, is a terrible mistake. Griffin's book is a tough read, but if you have an interest in identity formation and its relationship to religion, then give it a look. It will not be a waste of time. If you have an interest in Irish Catholics and their imprint on the Irish and American landscapes, you can't beat Kerby Miller's two books. The only serious academic competition No Name has to date on the diffusion of Presbyterianism is found in Marilyn Westerkamp's Triumph of the Laity.
A religious history of the Scot Irish, not a history of the people.......2005-07-24
Unless you are really interested in all the petty arguments about religion among the protestant, presbyterians and baptists this book is not for you. Data on the Scots Irish people themselves makes up less than 25% of this book and even then it is more into quoting what this official or that official had to say. You don't really get a feel for what the people were like or why they were the way they were.
If you want to understand our ancestors and what drove them, read "Born Fighting : How the Scots-Irish Shaped America" by James Webb. Not only does it bring these early settlers to life but tickled my intestests enough to buy more books on the over-mountain people and Andrew Jackson.
Curious.......2001-11-12
The first question I asked myself prior to reading the book was: "How will this book be different than Leyburn's book on the same subject, written in the 60s?" Not much. Given the number of studies, articles, etc covering this very topic it would have been valuable for griffin to have included a bibliographical essay to outline how his study breaks new ground. Still, Griffin does a thorough job outlining why the Protestant Dissenters left Ulster for the shores of America. However, his title "People With No Name" is curious, as these folks had several names (Ulster Scots, Presbyterians, Scots Irish, Dissenters) all of which Griffin acknowledges. It was also dissapointing to see a dissertation/book once again ignore Catholic migrants to America from Ireland. Catholics in Ireland are only mentioned on 7 of this book's 173 pages. No comparison is made between Griffin's Ulster Scots (or whatever he decides to call them) and their Catholic neighbors who surely underwent the same economic, agricultural, etc. trials in the 18th century.
Finally, on the back cover of the paperback, there is extremely high praise for the book from T. H. Breen, professor of history at Northwestern Univ. He calls the book "masterful," etc. Seeing how Breen was Griffin's Ph.D. dissertation advisor and presumably had a guiding role in the writing of this study, such praise seems out of place and distateful; Breen should have had the taste and sense of manners to skip the submission such a "blub" on the back cover.
Average customer rating:
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American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia)
Susan Scott Parrish
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
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ASIN: 0807856789 |
Book Description
Colonial America presented a new world of natural curiosities for settlers as well as the London-based scientific community. In American Curiosity, Susan Scott Parrish examines how various peoples in the British colonies understood and represented the natural world around them from the late sixteenth century through the eighteenth. Rather than flowing strictly from metropole to colony, scientific knowledge about America emerged from a horizontal exchange of information across the Atlantic.
Delving into an understudied archive of letters, Parrish uncovers early descriptions of American natural phenomena as well as clues to how people in the colonies construed their own identities through the natural world. Although hierarchies of gender, class, institutional learning, place of birth or residence, and race persisted within the natural history community, the contributions of any participant were considered valuable as long as they supplied novel data or specimens from the American side of the Atlantic. Thus Anglo-American nonelites, women, Indians, and enslaved Africans all played crucial roles in gathering and relaying new information to Europe.
Recognizing a significant tradition of nature writing and representation in North America well before the Transcendentalists, American Curiosity also enlarges our notions of the scientific Enlightenment by looking beyond European centers to find a socially inclusive American base to a true transatlantic expansion of knowledge.
Book Description
"The black experience in the antebellum South has been thoroughly documented. But histories set in the North are few. In the Shadow of Slavery, then, is a big and ambitious book, one in which insights about race and class in New York City abound. Leslie Harris has masterfully brought more than two centuries of African American history back to life in this illuminating new work."—David Roediger, author of The Wages of Whiteness
In 1991 in lower Manhattan, a team of construction workers made an astonishing discovery. Just two blocks from City Hall, under twenty feet of asphalt, concrete, and rubble, lay the remains of an eighteenth-century "Negro Burial Ground." Closed in 1790 and covered over by roads and buildings throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the site turned out to be the largest such find in North America, containing the remains of as many as 20,000 African Americans. The graves revealed to New Yorkers and the nation an aspect of American history long hidden: the vast number of enslaved blacks who labored to create our nation's largest city.
In the Shadow of Slavery lays bare this history of African Americans in New York City, starting with the arrival of the first slaves in 1626, moving through the turbulent years before emancipation in 1827, and culminating in one of the most terrifying displays of racism in U.S. history, the New York City Draft Riots of 1863. Drawing on extensive travel accounts, autobiographies, newspapers, literature, and organizational records, Leslie M. Harris extends beyond prior studies of racial discrimination by tracing the undeniable impact of African Americans on class, politics, and community formation and by offering vivid portraits of the lives and aspirations of countless black New Yorkers.
Written with clarity and grace, In the Shadow of Slavery is an ambitious new work that will prove indispensable to historians of the African American experience, as well as anyone interested in the history of New York City.
Customer Reviews:
Mixed Review.......2005-09-09
This book provides a good overview of blacks (slave and free) in New York. It's a very good reference (encyclopedic) book.
My main problem with it is that Leslie M. Harris, the author, relies heavily (if not entirely) on secondary sources. The book, then, is nothing more than a patchwork of various other more scholarly works. Hence, finding the actual primary source (i.e. court decision, council minutes, etc) proves extremely difficult.
I do not recommend this book for advanced students. If, however, you're interested in an easy read and don't care about sources, this is the book for you.
Book Description
"Jenny Hale Pulsipher's Subjects unto the Same King offers a new and important analysis of a crucial moment in American history. But rather than repeat an old story, Pulsipher here has told a new one, emphasizing that disputes hinged on questions of authority--who possessed it, who wanted it, who got it, and what they did with it. There are keen insights in almost every chapter, and the research is excellent. Pulsipher knows the existing documentary literature perhaps better than anyone who has worked on this subject."--Peter C. Mancall, University of Southern California Land ownership was not the sole reason for conflict between Indians and English, Jenny Pulsipher writes in Subjects unto the Same King, a book that cogently redefines the relationship between Indians and colonists in seventeenth-century New England. Rather, the story was much more complicated--and much more interesting. It is a tale of two divided cultures, but also of a host of individuals, groups, colonies, and nations, all of whom used the struggle between and within Indian and English communities to promote their own authority. As power within New England shifted, Indians appealed outside the region--to other Indian nations, competing European colonies, and the English crown itself--for aid in resisting the overbearing authority of such rapidly expanding societies as the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Thus Indians were at the center--and not always on the losing end--of a contest for authority that spanned the Atlantic world. Beginning soon after the English settled in Plymouth, the power struggle would eventually spawn a devastating conflict--King Philip's War--and draw the intervention of the crown, resulting in a dramatic loss of authority for both Indians and colonists by century's end. Through exhaustive research, Jenny Hale Pulsipher has rewritten the accepted history of the Indian-English relationship in colonial New England, revealing it to be much more complex and nuanced than previously supposed.
Jenny Hale Pulsipher teaches history at Brigham Young University.
Book Description
In this book about families--those of the various native peoples of southern New England and those of the English settlers and their descendants--Gloria Main compares the ways in which the two cultures went about solving common human problems. Using original sources--diaries, inventories, wills, court records--as well as the findings of demographers, ethnologists, and cultural anthropologists, she compares the family life of the English colonists with the lives of comparable groups remaining in England and of native Americans. She looks at social organization, patterns of work, gender relations, sexual practices, childbearing and childrearing, demographic changes, and ways of dealing with sickness and death.
Main finds that the transplanted English family system produced descendants who were unusually healthy for the times and spectacularly fecund. Large families and steady population growth led to the creation of new towns and the enlargement of old ones with inevitably adverse consequences for the native Americans in the area. Main follows the two cultures into the eighteenth century and makes clear how the promise of perpetual accessions of new land eventually extended Puritan family culture across much of the North American continent.
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- Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
- Factory Physics Second Edition
- First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War
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Books Index
Books Home
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Changes in the Land, Revised Edition: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life
Major Problems in American Colonial History: Documents and Essays (Major Problems in American History Series)
The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction
A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony
