A pioneer in American social history, Jackson Turner Main presents the first continuous and detailed picture of the economic and social structure of an American colony from its founding up to the Revolution. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Focusing on the Connecticut River Valley—New England's longest river and largest watershed— Strother Roberts traces the local, regional, and transatlantic markets in colonial commodities that shaped an ecological transformation in one corner of the rapidly globalizing early modern world. Reaching deep into the interior, the Connecticut provided a watery commercial highway for the furs, grain, timber, livestock, and various other commodities that the region exported. Colonial Ecology, Atlantic Economy shows how the extraction of each commodity had an impact on the New England landscape, creating a new colonial ecology inextricably tied to the broader transatlantic economy beyond its shores. This history refutes two common misconceptions: first, that globalization is a relatively new phenomenon and its power to reshape economies and natural environments has only fully been realized in the modern era and, second, that the Puritan founders of New England were self-sufficient ascetics who sequestered themselves from the corrupting influence of the wider world. Roberts argues, instead, that colonial New England was an integral part of Britain's expanding imperialist commercial economy. Imperial planners envisioned New England as a region able to provide resources to other, more profitable parts of the empire, such as the sugar islands of the Caribbean. Settlers embraced trade as a means to afford the tools they needed to conquer the landscape and to acquire the same luxury commodities popular among the consumer class of Europe. New England's native nations, meanwhile, utilized their access to European trade goods and weapons to secure power and prestige in a region shaken by invading newcomers and the diseases that followed in their wake. These networks of extraction and exchange fundamentally transformed the natural environment of the region, creating a landscape that, by the turn of the nineteenth century, would have been unrecognizable to those living there two centuries earlier.
The colonial era is especially appealing in regard to economic history because it represents a study in contrasts. The economy was exceptionally dynamic in terms of population growth and geographical expansion. No major famines, epidemics, or extended wars intervened to reverse, or even slow down appreciably, the tide of vigorous economic growth. Despite this broad expansion, however, the fundamental patterns of economic behavior remained fairly constant. The members of the main occupational groups - farmers, planters, merchants, artisans, indentured servants, and slaves - performed similar functions throughout the period. In comparison with the vast number of institutional innovations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, structural change in the colonial economy evolved gradually. With the exception of the adoption of the pernicious system of black slavery, few new economic institutions and no revolutionary new technologies emerged to disrupt the stability of this remarkably affluent commercial-agricultural society. Living standards rose slowly but fairly steadily at a rate of 3 to 5 percent a decade after 1650. (Monetary sums are converted into 1980 dollars so that the figures will be relevant to modern readers.) For the most part, this book describes the economic life styles of free white society. The term "colonists" is virtually synonymous here with inhabitants of European origin. Thus, statements about very high living standards and the benefits of land ownership pertain only to whites. One chapter does focus exclusively, however, on indentured servants and slaves. This book represents the author's best judgment about the most important features of the colonial economy and their relationship to the general society and to the movement for independence. It should be a good starting point for all - undergraduate to scholar - interested in learning more about the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This popular study, lauded by professors and scholars alike, has been diligently revised to reflect the tremendous amount of new research conducted during the last decade, and now includes a totally new chapter on women in the economy. Presenting a great deal of up-to-date information in a concise and lively style, the book surveys the main aspects of the colonial economy: population and economic expansion; the six main occupational groups (family farmers, indentured servants, slaves, artisans, great planters, and merchants); women in the economy; domestic and imperial taxes; the colonial monetary system; living standards for the typical family
Women before the Bar is the first study to investigate changing patterns of women's participation in early American courts across a broad range of legal actions--including proceedings related to debt, divorce, illicit sex, rape, and slander. Weaving the stories of individual women together with systematic analysis of gendered litigation patterns, Cornelia Dayton argues that women's relation to the courtroom scene in early New England shifted from one of integration in the mid-seventeenth century to one of marginality by the eve of the Revolution. Using the court records of New Haven, which originally had the most Puritan-dominated legal regime of all the colonies, Dayton argues that Puritanism's insistence on godly behavior and communal modes of disputing initially created unusual opportunities for women's voices to be heard within the legal system. But women's presence in the courts declined significantly over time as Puritan beliefs lost their status as the organizing principles of society, as legal practice began to adhere more closely to English patriarchal models, as the economy became commercialized, and as middle-class families developed an ethic of privacy. By demonstrating that the early eighteenth century was a crucial locus of change in law, economy, and gender ideology, Dayton's findings argue for a reconceptualization of women's status in colonial New England and for a new periodization of women's history.
In this true story, first published in 1798, Venture Smith tells readers about his capture as a boy in West Africa, survival of the Middle Passage, and dramatic quest to free himself from slavery to become a successful farmer, fisherman, and trader in the American Revolutionary era.
The years from 1690 to 1765 in America have usually been considered a waiting period before the Revolution. Mr. Bushman, in his penetrating study of colonial Connecticut, takes another view. He shows how, during these years, economic ambition and religious ferment profoundly altered the structure of Puritan society, enlarging the bounds of liberty and inspiring resistance to established authority. This is an investigation of the strains that accompanied the growth of liberty in an authoritarian society. Mr. Bushman traces the deterioration of Puritan social institutions and the consequences for human character. He does this by focusing on day-to-day life in Connecticut--on the farms, in the churches, and in the town meetings. Controversies within the towns over property, money, and church discipline shook the "land of steady habits," and the mounting frustration of common needs compelled those in authority, in contradiction to Puritan assumptions, to become more responsive to popular demands. In the Puritan setting these tensions were inevitably given a moral significance. Integrating social and economic interpretations, Mr. Bushman explains the Great Awakening of the 1740's as an outgrowth of the stresses placed on the Puritan character. Men, plagued with guilt for pursuing their economic ambitions and resisting their rulers, became highly susceptible to revival preaching. The Awakening gave men a new vision of the good society. The party of the converted, the "New Lights," which also absorbed people with economic discontents, put unprecedented demands on civil and ecclesiastical authorities. The resulting dissension moved Connecticut, almost unawares, toward republican attitudes and practices. Disturbed by the turmoil, many observers were, by 1765, groping toward a new theory of social order that would reconcile traditional values with their eighteenth-century experiences. Vividly written, full of illustrative detail, the manuscript of this book has been called by Oscar Handlin one of the most important works of American history in recent years. Table of Contents: PART ONE: SOCIETY IN 1690 1. Law and Authority 2. The Town and the Economy PART TWO: LAND, 1690-1740 3. Proprietors 4. Outlivers 5. New Plantations 6. The Politics of Land PART THREE: MONEY, 1710-1750 7. New Traders 8. East versus West 9. Covetousness PART FOUR: CHURCHES, 1690-1765 10. Clerical Authority 11. Dissent 12. Awakening 13. The Church and Experimental Religion 14. Church and State PART FIVE: POLITICS, 1740-1765 15. New Lights in Politics 16. A New Social Order Appendixes Bibliographical Note List of Works Cited Index Illustrations Map of Connecticut in 1765 Map of hereditary Mohegan lands and Wabbaquasset lands Reviews of this book: Employing his special training in psychology to advantage, Bushman has skillfully woven into his description and analysis of Connecticut society in the process of change, a bold interpretation of the impact of change upon individual character formation...The author has made a signal contribution to the history of liberty in America. --William and Mary Quarterly Reviews of this book: At the heart of history lies a vague but undeniable substance known as 'national character' or 'social character'...Richard L. Bushman has had the courage to offer his version of the evolution of the social character of Connecticut...The boldness of the attempt alone would make Puritan to Yankee an important book, but it is the general accuracy of its author's perception of the way the mechanism of historical change operates and the specific accuracy 0f his assessment of the results that makes the book one of the most fruitful historical studies produced in the last few years in any field of history. --History and Theory Reviews of this book: Professor Bushman's study of eighteenth-century Connecticut is a first-rate job of social history. He deals with large questions in satisfying detail...Energy in research is combined with courage in writing. --New England Quarterly
This volume in Oxford's A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise, readable narrative of the vast span of American history, from the earliest human migrations to the early twenty-first century when the United States loomed as a global power and comprised a complex multi-cultural society of more than 300 million people. The narrative is organized around major interpretive themes, with facts and dates introduced as needed to illustrate these themes. The emphasis throughout is on clarity and accessibility to the interested non-specialist.
