America's Forgotten Colonial History

by Dana Huntley

Overview

This is what we all learned in school: Pilgrims on the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. They had a rough start, but ultimately made a go of it, made friends with the Indians, and celebrated with a big Thanksgiving dinner. Other uptight religious Puritans followed them and the whole place became New England. There were some Dutch down in New York, and sooner or later William Penn and the Quakers came to build the City of Brotherly Love in Pennsylvania, and finally it was 1776 and time to revolt against King George III and become America.

That’s it. That’s the narrative of American colonial history known to one and all. Yet there are 150 years – six or seven generations between Plymouth Plantation and the 1770s – that are virtually unknown in our national consciousness and unaccounted for in our American narrative.

Who, what, when, where and why people were motivated to make a two-month crossing on the North Atlantic to carve a life in a largely uncharted, inhospitable wilderness? How and why did they build the varied societies that they did here in the New World colonies? How and why did we become America?

America’s Forgotten Colonial History tells that story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493059539
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	08/01/2021
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	624,056
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Dana Huntley was born on a New Hampshire dairy farm to English gentry farm families on both sides, who were here before the 1640s and played a role in every piece of New England history. Dana has a Ph.D. in British Literature (Drew University), M.A. from Fordham and taught for 16 years. For many years Dana wrote reviews and features for British Heritage (now British Heritage Travel), and for seven years designed travel itineraries for the magazine. In 2004, he was recruited by the magazine to become Editor. He stepped down as Editor in 2018, but continues to contribute regular features on British history, travel and culture. He lives in Epping, New Hampshire.

Table of Contents

Qui Esse Summas Nunc Venimus What we are to be, we are now becoming

Foreword Remembering the Past vii

Chapter 1 In the Beginning: A Tale of Two Countries 1

On a late medieval battlefield in the English midlands, the unlikely story of the American colonies began.

Chapter 2 The Backstory: Britain's Rocky Reformation Sets the Stage 10

King Henry VIII set England's bumpy path through the Reformation turmoil of the 1500s by staging a coup.

Chapter 3 Queen Elizabeth and a New World 22

Wherein the Child of the Reformation makes a great Queen, and England's exploration of North America really takes off.

Chapter 4 Of Puritans and Pilgrims 32

Protestant practice and belief were changing the worldview, worship, and lives of a growing tide of clergy and layfolk alike.

Chapter 5 Beginnings of Migration: The Plantation of Virginia 41

It had to start somewhere, but the choice of Jamestown Island made it difficult for a colony to flourish.

Chapter 6 The Exodus to Massachusetts 54

Seeking a place to be English but not Anglican, the Pilgrims and a Puritan flotilla set out hopefully for the New World.

Chapter 7 New England's Great Migration 69

A trickle became a Puritan flood to Massachusetts Bay, and King Charles was just as glad to see them go.

Chapter 8 Between the Colonies: An Active and Uncertain Age 80

There was still a lot of Atlantic coastline between Massachusetts, and Virginia that was fair game for colonization.

Chapter 9 England in Civil War 90

Tensions between the king and the Puritan Parliament had been growing for twenty years before war broke out in 1642.

Chapter 10 The Accidental Commonwealth 101

Lacking any precedent in history, in winning the peace the Puritan Parliament was at something of a loss as to what to do next.

Chapter 11 Restoration of the Stuart Monarchy 111

With the Merrie Monarch on the throne, the wheel certainly turned both in England and her New World colonies.

Chapter 12 William Penn and the Middle Way 119

The charter for Pennsylvania opened a broad door to a tolerant Quaker colony in the mid-Atlantic free from Anglican conformity.

Chapter 13 At the Turn of the Eighteenth Century 130

The Atlantic seaboard was filling up with settlement, but the river valleys inland and a vast expanse to the west still beckoned.

Chapter 14 Settled: A Cultural Divide and a Southern Border 141

Geography, religion, and worldview made their indelible imprint on the colonies and a Southern border that was finally defined.

Chapter 15 Setting Up the Great Scots Migration 151

When the Stuarts lost the throne in 1714 to the Hanoverian George, a lot of Scots were mighty unhappy.

Chapter 16 At Home in the Backcountry 161

As the Scots and Scots-Irish migrants poured in to the mid-Atlantic colonies, they happily made for the open land and familiar terrain of the Backcountry.

Chapter 17 The Wars for North America 170

With New France on the northern border, the nineteenth-century European wars inevitably spilled over to the imperial colonies.

Chapter 18 The Northern Campaign against New France 180

When British and Colonials ended the French and Indian War, France surrendered its presence in North America.

Chapter 19 Inching toward Independence 194

Inevitably, sooner or later the American colonies were going to assert their own identity, and the time was quickly getting ripe.

Chapter 20 We Are the Epilogue 205

And so, the thirteen British colonies born of centuries of history and the ideals of their own time made common cause in a complex world and became the United States.

Appendix A Time Line of Colonial Events 212

Index 213