American Colonies - The Settling of North America by Alan Taylor

A good example of Mr. Taylor's even handedness and wide scope of understanding is his treatment of the Pequot War. Modern day conservative and liberal intellectuals/academics have a peculiar fascination with this particular event. Howard Zinn utilizes it as an example of 'their deception (English), their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private property.' Mr. Wood's in his anemic tome dismisses accusations of genocide by quoting Alden Vaughn, ' Specialists, whether of military history or of related topics, viewed the causes of English-Indian wars as less simple, less unilateral, and the outcomes, though appallingly lethal, never genocidal. ' Mr. Woods goes on further to dismiss the idea that the Puritans were racist and in fact did not steal land from the the Indians. While both of these claims have various semantic difficulties and omission related misnomers, Mr. Taylor's' rich narration and less involved ideological assertions give a clearer picture than the defender of the 'people' or the ax grinder.

Mr. Taylor states, ' Regarding the war as a test of their godliness, the Puritans interpreted their especially bloody victory as compelling proof that God had found them worthy.' While the term racist has dubious utility at any portion of this inquiry and the greatest genocidal generator was the germ, God was the key difference between the native and the colonist. Captain Mason took some plays out of Cortez' book and got competing tribes to help initiate an attack on a village by the Mystic River. 'The indiscriminate slaughter contradicted Indian custom and shocked the Narragansett and Mohegan allies, who had expected to capture and adopt the women and children.' He even indicates that many Puritans cast doubt on these actions. the rationalizations all came in the form of scripture. Aside from the facts of various incidents, it the lead up that matters in this type of analysis. Personal private property was not an issue for natives. Certainly tribes would hold domain over territory and leaders would exchange favors and treaties with whomever was necessary.

While Mr. Woods considers the abundance of land as a commodity the natives willingly sacrificed for European goods and 'praying towns' were places that natives enjoyed great autonomy in, Mr. Taylor Taylor paints a far richer picture. He describes the mobile life of the natives as one that lead to more generosity, more leisure and certainly less accumulation. Quite simply there was no need for fences or livestock. Fish and game were in abundance, in many ways their farming was more efficient and less labor intensive. While the colonists viewed native men as lazy, natives felt Europeans were mean and stingy. Nobody ever starved in a native village, unless everybody else did. He states; '

The Algonquians possessed neither the market institutions nor the mentality of capitalism. There was no market in labor, for Indians did not hire one another to work for wages. Nor did they have the concept of 'capital' - much less a market for exchanging it. Algonquians also did not own particular parcels of land as exclusive, perpetual, and private property . . . Because land was not a commodity for them, the Indians neither bought nor sold portions of their domain - until induced or compelled to it by colonists. '

Likewise his description of the 'praying towns' was more a description of the creeping guilt amongst pious Puritans than any grand notion of conciliation or inherent fairness amongst the colonists. He continues, ' . . . the missionary effort demanded that Indians surrender their own culture as the price of physical survival. Because the English could not conceive of permitting the Indians remain independent and culturally autonomous peoples, they had to convert or die.' This is the type of writing and reflection which runs circles around the pithy and trite conclusions of Mr. Woods.

Aside from these petty squabbles that arise around historians of one tradition or another, the scope and breadth of this volume is the impressive part. He details the Spanish and British involvement in the Caribbean. The French in Canada. The Dutch pop up as ancillary effort of an empire involved in greater matters. These 'god-view' efforts are interlaced amongst anecdotal examples that include many harsh and horrifying aspects of the colonization. Emphasis on economic detail and motivations are never ignored. Key differences are outlined between the Virginia tobacco cultures and independent farms in the Northeast. The cohesive English family vs. the wandering serf. The balance between the French and the natives in contrast to the animosities in the Carolinas and the great chiefs there. The great detail involving the reliance on guns and the inability of natives to make the ammunition they became dependent on. Certainly the hostilities were not limited between natives and colonists.

The book is broken up into three parts. Encounters, Colonies & Empires. The first part may have been my favorite part. Loved the accounts of Coronado, the Grand Canyon and the Texas farm where artifacts of the expedition were recently found. The description of fantastic civilizations up almost the entire Mississippi that were destroyed by disease before very many people ever 'discovered' them. My initial interest was the Dutch influence in the Hudson valley, its relationship to the sovereign and the resultant policies to the people. Discovering some of the significance of the balance of the area was all there. The biggest trouble in the whole thing was the evangelical versus the fundamentalist harangues that ensued on various levels throughout the book. The least problematic being the French balance and handling of various elements. While completely integral to understanding the mindset of so many actors, the subject and not the writer was the greatest problem. So much of that way seems so silly and foreign to the modern sensibilities.

Any serious student of history should incorporate this book into their collection. The sense and the grand scheme of colonization is very clear here. I'd rather have had to read this as my Junior year in high school than any of the watered down texts students must suffer through now. Instead we see legions of students numbed with standardized tests and a select few who may ever continue to higher education and even be exposed to such a well written volume. I'm glad it took two years to get through this book. Every time I picked it up it was a completely enjoyable experience that really brought to the particular era, area or empire that was in question. This was quality well detailed and reasonable human inquiry. No axes to grind or people to protect.