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Title: American Colonies (The Penguin History of the United States) by Alan Taylor, Eric Foner ISBN: 0-14-200210-0 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 30 July, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.58 (19 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Comprehensive, Broad and Excellent
Comment: Alan Taylor has written a very thorough history of the peopling of the American continent that clearly takes its inspiration from Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel."
The human and demographic needs which controlled the pace and flow of early migration to North America as well as preordained the outcome of the clash between European and Indian cultures is the backbone of this impressive book. Although political decisions and the ambitions of kings as well as intrepid adventurers started the age of exploration, it was clearly economics which governed the establishment and success of colonies and determined whether or not landings and forts could attract sufficient settlers to become colonies as opposed to remaining lonely outposts garrisoned by impressed soldiers and agents of mercantilists. (This is not to belittle the role of imperial competition and advantage in colonial expansion, but those goals were either in pursuit of wealth or in response to the Spanish, who got started first and reaped an empire-enhancing wealth transfer early on -- one of such dimensions that the competitors had to respond).
Different policies played a role in the success or failure of colonial adventures. The Spanish combined Catholic mission with regard to conversion of Indians with sheer terror to support their efforts. The French, possessed of cold lands productive in animal furs but not in the kind of agriculture that could support large numbers of French transplants, had to rely on alliance and diplomacy with local natives to maintain their presence. Both of these kingdoms governed their colonies directly from the crown, which allowed for uniformity of control as well as mistakes. The English approached colonization in a piecework model which led to differing methods of implantation and maintenance of their settlements. Productive early colonies like the Leeward Islands were given over to large land barons (after the local populations were wiped out by European germs), slavery and brutal control to keep imported Africans in check processing sugar cane). The New England colonies -- given over to Puritans as a convenient way to exile them from England proper, were religious refuges which at times had a somewhat more tolerant view of life with the native population than the Spanish but much less than the French (although they succeeded in clearing the area of Indians through disease and war just the same). The Southern colonies featured crown dominions (in the case of Virginia) that relied on control and force to keep slave labor and Indians at bay. The pressure for more land to plant profitable tobacco led to a brutalization of Indians who stood in the way of plantation formation. Pennsylvania, in the middle colonial region, was for a time a unique experiment of the private citizen William Penn that took perhaps the most enlightened (this is relative to the time of course) view of life with a native population. Never much under crown auspices for most of its history, the Penn experiment became a beacon for the outcasts (political, religious, economic) of the Old World who could gumption up enough nerve to transplant across the Atlantic. Nowhere in the English system did the local Indian population enjoy a better coexistence than in Pennsylvania (though that too, proved illusory in the long run as population pressures and disease led to the same land grabbing mentality as in other colonies).
What Taylor does extremely well is focus on the forces that controlled political decisions regarding colonization and development in North America. Germs played an incredible role, killing off 90% of Native Americans before large-scale contact with Europeans in most places. Technology and organization next doomed those few Indians left in this war for the continent. They could simply not compete with guns, horses and allegiance to crown or colony when they themselves were usually tiny members of small bands numbering in the hundreds or low thousands (with the exceptions of the Inca and Aztecs) who often warred with the next band as much as the local colonists.
It is interesting that Taylor, while very sympathetic and true to what is basically a story of annihilation of native cultures (for the vast part by disease, the great unplanned and unimagined ally of the Europeans), does not paint the Indians as a harmonious peaceful people inhabiting an Eden like continent prior to its despoiling by Europeans. While Indians lived fairly harmoniously with their surroundings (though not with each other as Taylor points out often, slavery, warfare, kidnapping and competition being normal aspects of inter-Indian affairs), they nonetheless shaped the local environment and remade the land to suit their needs. In agricultural areas, burning was practiced and evidence shows plant species were extinguished and changed to make way for or as a result of Indian farming. Rather than living as one with nature, the Indians shaped nature for their purposes, although their lack of technology and political organization made their imprint upon the land much less severe than that of the men of Europe.
Taylor focuses much of the book on the Spanish, English and French experiences - proper since they were the major players. This book is comprehensive though, and tells the story of Dutch, Sweedish and Russian contact with North America. Taylor also describes the Native peopling of North America, spending time describing their interaction with each other, their management of life on the continent prior to European discovery as well as attempts to survive with the new realities wrought by Europe.
This is a very comprehensive and thorough book that takes a look at the peopling of the North American continent through the broad lens of history. This appropriate approach spends a lot of time on the geographic, demographic, economic and biological factors that informed, shaped and in many cases pre-ordained the outcomes when native cultures clashed with European and as European countries jockeyed for position in the New World. This is a very worthwhile reading and would serve as an excellent jumping off point for those whose interest would lead them to more conventional political histories of the colonial period.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Highly Informative and Accessible History
Comment: In "American Colonies," historian Alan Taylor has created an easily accessible yet highly informative overview of the crucial first era of the history of North America. Taylor does an admirable job of elaborating on the simple framework of names and dates that bore so many contemporary students; he discusses geography, agriculture, trade, as well as the cultures and religions of the myriad groups (both native and European) that created colonial America.
Rather than attempting to cover the entire continent in a continuous chronology, Taylor breaks the book into 19 chapters, each describing one geographic area during a given time period (e.g. "Virginia 1570-1650," "New England 1600-1700"). I found this organizational choice to be very effective; it makes the scope of the topic manageable and also allows one to easily research a specific area. The chapter setup is all the better due to the content choices Taylor has made. Rather than focus solely on the 13 British colonies, the book also spends time on the Spanish and French settlements. I fear that many people think Columbus discovered North America in 1492 and then nothing happened until the Pilgrims landed in 1620. Taylor corrects that misperception by including two chapters on the Spanish settlements in Mexico, New Mexico, and Florida before even touching on the British colonies. There are also two chapters on New France and Canada that give greater meaning to the Seven Years War. I was most pleased, however, with the chapter discussing the British West Indies, a geographic area completely ignored by many US History courses. Yet as Taylor explains, the West Indies at that time were FAR more valuable to the Crown than the mainland colonies! These chapters are a much needed corrective, but they are not given disproportionate coverage: a large majority of the book focuses on what was to become the continental United States.
The story of the early United States is largely a story of European-Indian interactions, another topic Taylor handles well. Rather than taking Native Americans for granted, he spends the first chapter explaining their origins, the migrations across the Bering Strait, and their lives before European contact. But the eventual clash of cultures is the dominant story and Taylor states the case bluntly: beginning with the Taino on Hispaniola (p. 38-39), Europeans conquered, murdered, and enslaved native peoples on an unthinkable scale. But Taylor lets the evidence speak for itself and does not lecture the reader or take the opportunity to moralize. Furthermore, he dispels several myths about Indians that seem to be creeping into popular belief. Indians were not inherently peaceful peoples: the Five Nation Iroquois had gruesome rituals of torture ("The seventeenth century was a merciless time for the defeated on either side of the Atlantic" [p. 103]) and raided the Huron to near extinction. Nor were they pre-modern environmentalists: "Natives usually showed restraint, not because they were ecologically minded in the twentieth century sense, but because spirits, who could harm people, lurked in the animals and plants" (p. 19). All in all, I thought the book presented a very balanced and detailed account of the Native Americans.
Although I read this book on my own time, I could not help but appreciate what a great book it would be for students, either high school or college. (It is the first volume of The Penguin History of the United States, edited by Eric Foner.) First, Taylor does not assume a great deal of prior knowledge and goes out of his way to clearly explain concepts that other books might not. For example, Taylor explains the English Parliament in a way that would be very helpful to those not familiar with British history while not boring those of us who know more (p. 120). The Glorious Revolution (p. 278) and the advent of Quakers (p. 264) are both handled in a similarly informative way. The book also includes the relevant maps for each chapter, a great boon to students familiarizing themselves with geography. Finally, the book is based almost exclusively on secondary sources. This point concerned me at first, but I came to love the fact that for any topic I could look in the extensive bibliography and find an entire book on that particular subject.
Given this praise, why only four stars? Basically, I'm stingy with the five star reviews. While I found this book extremely informative and easy to read, it was never thrilling. This lack of excitement is no fault of the author, the topic is just too broad to be gripping: colonial America covers too much time, too much space, and too many figures (none of whom can be adequately fleshed out in such a broad survey). Ultimately I found "American Colonies" to be a consistently good book (perhaps the best on the subject as a whole) but not an excellent book. I do, however, very much look forward to reading Professor Taylor's other book, "William Cooper's Town," for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.
Rating: 4
Summary: very good
Comment: This book is excellent; the only book on colonial history you will ever need (although after reading it, you may be inspired to dig deeper). I wish more historians could write like Talyor. Only one small complaint -- I wish there had been more detailed maps.
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Title: Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America by Daniel K. Richter ISBN: 0674011171 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood ISBN: 0679736883 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 March, 1993 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 (Vintage) by Fred Anderson ISBN: 0375706364 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity by Jill Lepore ISBN: 0375702628 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 by Richard White ISBN: 0521424607 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1991 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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