Showing titles in Colonial Period

In the 18th century, Bridgetown, Barbados, was heavily populated by both enslaved and free women. Marisa J. Fuentes creates a portrait of urban Caribbean slavery in this colonial town from the perspective of these women whose stories appear only briefly in historical records. Combining fragmentary sources with interdisciplinary methodologies that include black feminist theory and critical studies of history and slavery, Dispossessed Lives demonstrates how the construction of the archive marked enslaved women's bodies, in life and in death.

Decades after witch-hunting had begun to die down in Europe, North America was about to witness its bloodiest witch hunt in history. The Massachusetts of 1692 was a very different one to the state we know today. Populated by colonists, many of them a generation or less from life in an England bathed in religious turmoil, Massachusetts was not the safe haven that the fleeing Puritans had hoped it would be. Persecuted for their faith in Europe, the Puritans had pictured a kind of utopia founded on biblical principles.

Beginning in January 1692, Salem Village in colonial Massachusetts witnessed the largest and most lethal outbreak of witchcraft in early America. Villagers - mainly young women - suffered from unseen torments that caused them to writhe, shriek, and contort their bodies, complaining of pins stuck into their flesh and of being haunted by specters. Believing that they suffered from assaults by an invisible spirit, the community began a hunt to track down those responsible for the demonic work.

In 1621, 57 women undertook a three-month journey to Jamestown after responding to an advert placed by the Virginia Company, looking for wives for its tobacco planters in the New Colony. They travelled of their own free will, but the Company was effectively selling them at a profit, having set a bride price of 150lbs of tobacco for each woman. But what did the women want? Why did they make the perilous Atlantic crossing to a dangerous land, where six out of seven European settlers died within a few years?

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the #1 national bestseller Cleopatra unpacks the mystery of the Salem Witch Trials. “The Witches is the fullest and finest story ever told about Salem in 1692, and no one else could tell it with the otherworldly flair of Stacy Schiff.” ―Joseph J. Ellis...

*National Bestseller* A sweeping account of America's oldest unsolved mystery, the people racing to unearth its answer, and the sobering truths--about race, gender, and immigration--exposed by the Lost Colony of Roanoke In 1587, 115 men, women, and children arrived at Roanoke Island on the coast...

In fact, of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower, only about 40 were fleeing England for religious reasons. And if you want to learn more fascinating facts about this cultural icon, pay attention.... The Reformation brought sweeping changes across Europe. In England, that led to the formation of a small congregation of radicals known as the Separatists. These were ordinary farmers and craftsmen who simply didn’t believe in the Anglican Church, and they found themselves hounded out of their own country like criminals.

"A fast-paced, often riveting account of the military and political events leading up to the Declaration of Independence and those that followed during the war ... Brands does his readers a service by reminding them that division, as much as unity, is central to the founding of our nation...

Fleeing a troubled past, Sarah Faust has found the perfect place to begin a new life. Tucked away on a charming side street and surrounded by lush grounds, the neglected 300-year-old townhouse in the port city of Charleston offers a refuge and a place to start over. But all is not as it seems at Five Rue Lane, and she soon finds that her new house harbors something that has been there for a very long time. Something that refuses to stay buried.

As editor of the award-winning Library of America collection of George Washington's writings and a curator of the great man's original papers, John Rhodehamel has established himself as an authority of our nation's preeminent founding father. Rhodehamel examines George Washington as a public figure, arguing that the man - who first achieved fame in his early twenties - is inextricably bound to his mythic status.

The French and Indian War was the world's first truly global conflict. When the French lost to the British in 1763, they lost their North American empire along with most of their colonies in the Caribbean, India, and West Africa. In The French and Indian War and the Conquest of New France, the only comprehensive account from the French perspective, William R. Nester explains how and why the French were defeated.

Did you know that the first English settlement in the New World was a disaster? Perhaps you have heard the story of Roanoke before. Or maybe even the creation of Jamestown. But have you heard about the Spanish colonies in North America? Or the French and Dutch settlements? Colonial America was diverse, with European settlers from various nations coming to the New World and meeting the Native Americans who already inhabited the land. What were their interactions like? Was there any semblance of peace between all of the groups who called this land their home?

"The deck, that is the floor of their rooms, was so covered with the blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in consequence of the flux, that it resembled a slaughter-house. It is not in the power of the human imagination to picture a situation more dreadful or disgusting. Numbers of the slaves having fainted, they were carried upon deck where several of them died and the rest with great difficulty were restored. It had nearly proved fatal to me also." - Dr. Alexander Falconbridge, an 18th century British surgeon

In the 10 lessons of America’s Founding Women, you will uncover the very real stories of the women who helped shape the United States as it underwent its transformation from a British colony to a fledgling nation. Professor Cassandra Good will help you understand what life was like for women during the American Revolution, and beyond, and how these women balanced the rigid social expectations of the late 18th and early 19th centuries with their own talents and desires.

The new single-volume edition of Conceived in Liberty is here! After so many years of having to juggle four volumes, the Mises Institute has finally put it all together in a single book. This makes it easier to listen to and makes clearer just what a contribution this book is to the history of libertarian literature. There's never been a better time to remember the revolutionary and even libertarian roots of the American founding, and there's no better guide to what this means in the narrative of the colonial period than Murray Rothbard.

Robert Rogers, commander of Rogers' Rangers during the French and Indian War, was the war's best-known colonial military hero and, in the ensuing peace, one of the best-known Americans of any description, rivaling Benjamin Franklin in popularity. Rogers is known today for his role in developing the mystique of the modern Ranger, but what explains his meteoric rise and his long, depressing fall? Robert Rogers, Ranger: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon by Martin Klotz is a fresh look at the life of this famous, yet highly flawed man.

In the vaunted annals of America’s founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary “city upon a hill” and the “cradle of liberty” for an independent United States. Wresting this iconic urban center from these misleading, tired clichés, The City-State of Boston highlights Boston’s overlooked past as an autonomous city-state, and in doing so, offers a path-breaking and brilliant new history of early America.

The word ‘Independence’ is, quite frankly, a very common word today – celebrated, venerated, and metaphorically worn as a badge by every citizen of a democracy, such as the United States. And it has a deep association with the word ‘Freedom.’ For any American today, these two form the basis of their fundamental rights – you were born with them, and you will die with them. But have you ever thought about the weight that these two words carry? Or the toll they left in their wake within the bloodied pages of the history of the United States?

The essential history of the extraordinary year in which American democracy and American slavery emerged hand in hand in Virginia “If anyone today knows colonial Virginia, it is James Horn.” —Wall Street Journal Along the banks of the James River, during an oppressively hot spell in the...

Tormented girls writhing in agony, stern judges meting out harsh verdicts, 19 bodies swinging on Gallows Hill. The stark immediacy of what happened in 1692 has obscured the complex web of human passion which climaxed in the Salem witch trials. From rich and varied sources - many neglected and unknown - Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum give us a picture of the people and events more intricate and more fascinating than any other in the massive literature. It is a story of powerful and deeply divided families and of a community determined to establish an independent identity.