History 117 - HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES - Kronbeck

In American Colonies award-winning historian Alan Taylor challenges the traditional Anglocentric focus of colonial history by exploring the multitude of cultural influences out of which "America" ultimately emerged. From the Siberian migrations across the Bering Strait fifteen thousand years ago & the European expeditions of the seventeenth & eighteenth centuries through the nineteenth-century exploration & occupation of the Hawaiian Islands, Taylor traces the complex ecological, ethnic, & economic history & colonization of the New World from coast to coast, from the Canadian north to the Pacific rim. Examining the repeatedly overlooked influence of the continent's natives upon the colonists & the resulting mutual dependence of the two, Taylor presents a unique & revelatory view of colonial North America. European colonists, African slaves, & native peoples met one another & interacted at a pace & intensity unparalleled in global history. The effects of this staggering confluence of cultural, ecological, military, diplomatic, & economic interests are still being felt in America today. This fascinating & involving history of the origins of the United States will provoke & appeal to all readers of American history.

Though the English did not begin their colonization of the New World with the intention of enslaving anyone, by the end of the seventeenth century chattel slavery existed in each of England's American colonies. Why? And why did the English enslave West Africans rather than native Americans or Europeans? Historians have usually stressed either racial ideology or determining economic and demographic factors, but Betty Wood suggests that a more complex rationale was at work. In this important new analysis, Wood begins by exploring the meanings of freedom and bondage in sixteenth-century English thought and the ideas that men and women of Tudor England had about Africans and native Americans. She studies their prejudices against non-Christians, their responses to models of slavery in the Spanish and French colonies, and their assessment of their own labor shortages, and in the light of these various factors interprets the decision of the English to resort to slave labor in the colonies. She then follows the spread of slavery through the seventeenth century, from the Caribbean and the Carolinas to Virginia tobacco country and finally among the Puritans and Quakers farther north.

An eye-opening examination of America's foundation On September 17, 1787, at the State House in Philadelphia, thirty-nine men from twelve states, after months of often bitter debate, signed America's Constitution. Yet very few of the delegates, at the start, had had any intention of creating a nation that would last. Most were driven more by pragmatic, regional interests than by idealistic vision. Many were meeting for the first time, others after years of contention, and the inevitable clash of personalities would be as intense as the advocacy of ideas or ideals. No issue was of greater concern to the delegates than that of slavery: it resounded through debates on the definition of treason, the disposition of the rich lands west of the Alleghenies and the admission of new states, representation and taxation, the need for a national census, and the very make-up of the legislative and executive branches of the new government. As Lawrence Goldstone provocatively makes clear in Dark Bargain, "to a significant and disquieting degree, America's most sacred document was molded and shaped by the most notorious institution in its history."

While the American Revolution is often associated with New England and names like Boston, Concord, and Lexington, the Southern Colonies and names like Kings Mountain, Cowpens, and Charleston were also crucial to the war that established the United States of America. This analysis of the role of the Southern Colonies in the Revolution covers the origin of these five colonies-Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia-and their participation in the cause of American independence. Crucial Southern battles, from the coast to the mountains, are examined in detail, with attention to the larger context of the war and its significance, as well as to the role of the ordinary Southerner, both patriot and Tory.

A definitive history by a writer deeply immersed in the subject, Inhuman Bondage offers a compelling narrative that links together the profits of slavery, the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism. It is the ultimate portrait of the dark side of the American dream. Yet it offers an inspiring example as well--the story of how abolitionists, barely a fringe group in the 1770s, successfully fought, in the space of a hundred years, to defeat one of human history's greatest evils.

Winner of the Southern Anthropological Society's prestigious James Mooney Award, Uncommon Ground takes a unique archaeological approach to examining early African American life. Ferguson shows how black pioneers worked within the bars of bondage to shape their distinct identity and lay a rich foundation for the multicultural adjustments that became colonial America.Through pre-Revolutionary period artifacts gathered from plantations and urban slave communities, Ferguson integrates folklore, history, and research to reveal how these enslaved people actually lived. Impeccably researched and beautifully written.

Today most Americans, black and white, identify slavery with cotton, the deep South, and the African-American church. But at the beginning of the nineteenth century, after almost two hundred years of African-American life in mainland North America, few slaves grew cotton, lived in the deep South, or embraced Christianity. Many Thousands Gone traces the evolution of black society from the first arrivals in the early seventeenth century through the Revolution. In telling their story, Ira Berlin, a leading historian of southern and African-American life, reintegrates slaves into the history of the American working class and into the tapestry of our nation.

This book analyses the impact of American Revolutionary ideology upon conceptions of the place of slavery in American society.

Critically acclaimed classic lets Puritans speak for themselves in crucial documents covering history, theory of state and society, religion, customs, behavior, biographies and letters, poetry, literary theory, education, science, and more. Regarded by historian Samuel Eliot Morison as "the best selection ever made of Puritan literature, point of view and culture."

Between 1501 and 1867, the transatlantic slave trade claimed an estimated 12.5 million Africans and involved almost every country with an Atlantic coastline. In this extraordinary book, two leading historians have created the first comprehensive, up-to-date atlas on this 350-year history of kidnapping and coercion. It features nearly 200 maps, especially created for the volume, that explore every detail of the African slave traffic to the New World. The atlas is based on an online database (www.slavevoyages.org) with records on nearly 35,000 slaving voyages—roughly 80 percent of all such voyages ever made. Using maps, David Eltis and David Richardson show which nations participated in the slave trade, where the ships involved were outfitted, where the captives boarded ship, and where they were landed in the Americas, as well as the experience of the transatlantic voyage and the geographic dimensions of the eventual abolition of the traffic. Accompanying the maps are illustrations and contemporary literary selections, including poems, letters, and diary entries, intended to enhance readers’ understanding of the human story underlying the trade from its inception to its end.

This groundbreaking work provides the fullest possible picture of the extent and inhumanity of one of the largest forced migrations in history.

Gundersen's analysis benefits from two decades of scholarly research into the lives of colonial women. Her vivid account synthesizes the work of her colleagues and brings an essential multicultural perspective to the discussion. She examines the lives of African women brought as slaves to the colonies and their American-born descendants, as well as of Native American women. Gundersen also extends the parameters of her study to include the decades that bracketed the Revolution, framing her argument around three generations of women in three households. To be Useful to the World opens with engaging accounts of three women: Elizabeth Porter, a Virginian of the small-planter class whose household includes her extended family and several slaves; Deborah Franklin, the Philadelphian wife of Benjamin Franklin; and Margaret Brant, an Iroquois woman whose family became British allies during the Revolutionary War. Through her examination of these women's lives, Gundersen illustrates the diversity of the colonial experience for women as well as the trends that crossed ethnic and class boundaries. She then follows the lives of these women's daughters through the years of the Revolution and closes her account with their granddaughters, who began their lives in post Revolutionary America. In presenting these daughters of the Revolution, Gundersen finds that while the Revolution provided opportunities for some women it also restricted the lives of others in a give and take resulting from the integrated yet divergent communities that made up the new world. This lucid account brings to life the experience of women during a period of war and profound change, a period that continues to shape Americanthought and culture to the present.

The American Revolution was a home-front war that brought scarcity, bloodshed, and danger into the life of every American, and Carol Berkin shows us that women played a vital role throughout the struggle.

Berkin takes us into the ordinary moments of extraordinary lives. We see women boycotting British goods in the years before independence, writing propaganda that radicalized their neighbors, raising funds for the army, and helping finance the fledgling government. We see how they managed farms, plantations, and businesses while their men went into battle, and how they served as nurses and cooks in the army camps, risked their lives seeking personal freedom from slavery, and served as spies, saboteurs, and warriors.

She introduces us to sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington, who sped through the night to rouse the militiamen needed to defend Danbury, Connecticut; to Phillis Wheatley, literary prodigy and Boston slave, who voiced the hopes of African Americans in poems; to Margaret Corbin, crippled for life when she took her husband’s place beside a cannon at Fort Monmouth; to the women who gathered firewood, cooked, cleaned for the troops, nursed the wounded, and risked their lives carrying intelligence and participating in reconnaissance missions. Here, too, are Abigail Adams, Deborah Franklin, Lucy Knox, and Martha Washington, who lived with the daily knowledge that their husbands would be hanged as traitors if the revolution did not succeed. A recapturing of the experiences of ordinary women who lived in extraordinary times, and a fascinating addition to our understanding of the birth of our nation.

The Indian, European, and African women of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America were defenders of their native land, pioneers on the frontier, willing immigrants, and courageous slaves. They were also - as earlier scholars tended to overlook - as important as men in shaping American culture and history.
First Generations is one of the first books to examine these women's experiences, to look at them not only as wives, mothers, household managers, laborers, rebels, but, invariably, as active participants in the creation of their societies. In fascinating biographical portraits and analyses of collective experiences, Carol Berkin conveys the varieties of female lives, separated by class, region, and race but linked by laws and presumptions that defined them by gender.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-259) and index.
An iconoclastic look at America's past: overlooked episodes that shaped the nation's destiny and character. Spanning a period from the Spanish arrival in America to George Washington's inauguration in 1789, these narratives bring to light little-known but fascinating, myth-busting facts. Read the story of the first real Pilgrims in America, who were wine-making French Huguenots, not dour English Separatists; the coming-of-age story of Queen Isabella, who suggested that Columbus take pigs on his voyage, which may have spread disease to many Native Americans; the long, bloody relationship between the Pilgrims and Indians, running counter to the idyllic scene of the Thanksgiving feast; the little-known story of George Washington as a headstrong young soldier who committed a war crime, signed a confession, and started a war. Full of color, intrigue, and human interest, this book connects some of the dots between history and today's headlines--From publisher description.