Description
Book SynopsisThis interdisciplinary study examines how age norms shaped the experiences of Europeans, Native Americans, and African Americans in colonial North America, exploring how diverse population groups conceptualized the human life course and how they adhered to culturally specific sets of beliefs about the young and old. Utilizing evidence drawn from a variety of secondary and primary sources, the authors also show that, as various cultural groups interacted in colonial North America, their views of specific age cohorts evolved and clashed in important ways. Although age is a category of analysis often overlooked by scholars, this book demonstrates that it was pivotal for everyone who lived in early North America, including the various Native American tribes that inhabited the eastern part of the continent. It also addresses the different ways that European colonists experienced the human life course in three geopolitical regions: New England, the Middle Colonies, and the South. It further
Trade ReviewThis interdisciplinary exploration of age norms on the British North American mainland proposes that the insights of today's field of human development can inform social histories of Colonial American regional populations and their intersections with other groups. A short introductory chapter sketches some possible applications to the period before European contact in very general terms, followed by larger chapters examining first southern, then New England, and finally mid-Atlantic settlements. A long chapter describes how age grouping affected social interactions among the regional groups. Interactions among colonists and Indians are described as collision, and slavery receives a separate treatment at the end of the book. The final and most useful chapter suggests directions for further research that hold promise, should future studies employ the methodological rigor expected of both historical and human development studies and, in particular, of the use of quantitative analyses rather than generalizations from the specific example to the universal. The evolution of an American doctrine of legal minority might well be informed by the further study suggested here… Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students/faculty. * CHOICE *
Drawing on a diverse array of sources, including laws, personal papers, runaway slave advertisements, newspapers, and government documents, Eden and Eden are among the few scholars to simultaneously tackle the way that age worked for the young and the old, instead of sequestering one group away from the other. In uniting the youthful and the aged, Age Norms provides a rich account of how age mattered in colonial America.... Eden and Eden have provided scholars with a useful synthesis of the varied meanings of age stages along the eastern seaboard of colonial North America, demonstrating in particular that different cultural beliefs about childhood, youth, and old age were key to how whites, Africans, and Indians understood each other and engaged in the colonial contest of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Future studies shall look to Age Norms as a guide when they seek to establish just how pervasive chronological age was to varied groups of early Americans. * Journal Of The History Of Childhood And Youth *
The Edens are to be commended for giving us a comprehensive and interdisciplinary view of a complex history of age norms over thirteen colonies, three major culture groups, and two centuries. * Journal of American History *
Jason Eden and Naomi Eden expand the intellectual domain of age studies in their important, revisionist study of the varieties of (old) age in colonial North America. Not only do they compare the age-based status of tribal elders to conditions among the young and middle-aged in Native American communities, but they also explore the ways that age norms affected perspectives and relations across racial, ethnic, and gender lines. -- W. Andrew Achenbaum, University of Houston
This is a timely and compelling book on an unfairly neglected subject—the importance of age as a category of analysis. This insightful and novel work combines both extremes of the life course: old age and youth. Jason Eden and Naomi Eden’s work epitomizes the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration in awakening important new historical insights. This wide-sweeping consideration of the intersection of biological realities with cultural preoccupations about youth and old age across racial and power differences shows us the complicated early America we too often forget. -- Rebecca Brannon, James Madison University
Age Norms and Intercultural Interaction in Colonial North America offers compelling evidence for the authors' claim that age matters as a historical category of analysis. The work is ambitious in scope and employs creative use of source material to successfully describe how Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and colonial Europeans were treated because of their age, and how that treatment mattered as the three groups forged a new world together. This book's accessible language and straightforward organization make it an important reference for students and scholars alike. -- Kristen Lashua, Vanguard University
Table of ContentsChapter 1: Native American Age Norms before 1492 Chapter 2: English Age Norms in the Southern Colonies Chapter 3: English Age Norms in New England Chapter 4: English Age Norms in the Middle Colonies Chapter 5: English and Indian Age Norms Collide Chapter 6: Age Norms and Slavery
