Description
Book SynopsisAMERICAN COLONIES starts with the earliest years of human colonization of the American continent and environs with the Siberian migrations across the Bering Strait 15,000 years ago. It ends in around 1800 when the rough outline of the contemporary North America could be perceived.
Dropping the usual Anglocentric description of North America''s fate, Taylor brilliantly conveys the far more vivid and startling story of the competing interests--Spanish, French, English, Native, Russian--that over the centuries shaped and reshaped both the continent and its ''suburbs'' in the Caribbean and the Pacific. It is one of the greatest of all human stories.
Trade Review"Formidable...provokes us to contemplate the ways in which residents of North America have dealt with diversity." -
The New York Times Book Review"A superb overview of colonial America." -
Christian Science Monitor"Compelling, readable, and fresh,
American Colonies is perhaps the most brilliant piece of synthesis in recent American historical writing." —
Phillip J. Deloria, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor of American Culture and History at the University of Michigan
“Even the serious student of history will find a great deal of previously obscure information. The book offers a balanced understanding of the diverse peoples and forces that converged on this continent and influenced the course of American history.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Crammed full of fascinating material uncovered by historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists in the past half-century.”
—NewsdayTable of ContentsIntroduction
Part I. Encounters
1. Natives, 13,000 B.C.-A.D. 1492
2. Colonizers, 1400-1800
3. New Spain, 1500-1600
4. The Spanish Frontier, 1530-1700
5. Canada and Iroquoia, 1500-1660
Part II. Encounters
6. Virginia, 1570-1650
7. Chesapeake Colonies, 1650-1750
8. New England, 1600-1700
9. Puritans and Indians, 1600-1700
10. The West Indies, 1600-1700
11. Carolina, 1670-1760
12. Middle Colonies, 1600-1700
Part III. Empires
13. Revolutions, 1685-1730
14. The Atlantic, 1700-80
15. Awakenings, 1700-75
16. French America, 1650-1750
17. The Great Plains, 1680-1800
18. Imperial Wars and Crisis, 1739-75
19. The Pacific, 1760-1820
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
