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Cover image of Cultures and Identities in Colonial British America
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Cultures and Identities in Colonial British America

edited by Robert Olwell and Alan Tully

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Never truly a "new world" entirely detached from the home countries of its immigrants, colonial America, over the generations, became a model of transatlantic culture. Colonial society was shaped by the conflict between colonists' need to adapt to the American environment and their desire to perpetuate old world traditions or to imitate the charismatic model of the British establishment. In the course of colonial history, these contrasting impulses produced a host of distinctive cultures and identities.

In this impressive new collection, prominent scholars of early American history explore this...

Never truly a "new world" entirely detached from the home countries of its immigrants, colonial America, over the generations, became a model of transatlantic culture. Colonial society was shaped by the conflict between colonists' need to adapt to the American environment and their desire to perpetuate old world traditions or to imitate the charismatic model of the British establishment. In the course of colonial history, these contrasting impulses produced a host of distinctive cultures and identities.

In this impressive new collection, prominent scholars of early American history explore this complex dynamic of accommodation and replication to demonstrate how early American societies developed from the intersection of American and Atlantic influences. The volume, edited by Robert Olwell and Alan Tully, offers fresh perspectives on colonial history and on early American attitudes toward slavery and ethnicity, native Americans, and the environment, as well as colonial social, economic, and political development. It reveals the myriad ways in which American colonists were the inhabitants and subjects of a wider Atlantic world.

Cultures and Identities in Colonial British America, one of a three-volume series under the editorship of Jack P. Greene, aims to give students of Atlantic history a "state of the field" survey by pursuing interesting lines of research and raising new questions. The entire series, "Anglo-America in the Transatlantic World," engages the major organizing themes of the subject through a collection of high-level, debate-inspiring essays, inviting readers to think anew about the complex ways in which the Atlantic experience shaped both American societies and the Atlantic world itself.

Reviews

Reviews

Very engaging collection of twelve original essays.

This book is... important, inspiring readers to think about the identity issues of late Colonial America in new and novel ways.

A helpful introduction.

An impressive collection of accessible essays from twelve historians.

The editors here are to be applauded for coping so admirably with the challenge of creating a coherent volume out of such a broad range of topics.

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About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
360
ISBN
9781421418469
Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I: Environment and Identity
1. The Nature of Slavery: Environmental Disorder and Slave Agency in Colonial South Carolina
2. "For Want of a Social Set": Networks and Social Interaction

Introduction
Part I: Environment and Identity
1. The Nature of Slavery: Environmental Disorder and Slave Agency in Colonial South Carolina
2. "For Want of a Social Set": Networks and Social Interaction in the Lower Cape Fear Region of North Carolina, 1725-1775
3. "Almost an Englishman": Eighteenth-Century Anglo-African Identities
4. Conservation, Class, and Controversy in Early America
Part II: Exchange and Identity
5. Beyond Declension: Economic Adaptation and the Pursuit of Export Markets in the Massachusetts Bay Region, 1630-1700
6. Paternalism and Profits: Planters and Overseers in Piedmont Virginia, 1750-1825
7. "The Fewnesse of Handicraftsmen": Artisan Adaptation and Innovation in the Colonial Chesapeake
8. The Other "Susquahannah Traders": Women and Exchange on the Pennsylvania Frontier
Part III: Politics and Identity
9. A Death in the Morning: The Murder of Daniel Parke
10. Enjoying and Defending Charter Privileges: Corporate Status and Political Culture in Eighteenth-Century Rhode Island
11. Native Americans, the Plan of 1764, and a British Empire That Never Was
12. Between Private and Public Spheres: Liberty as Cultural Property in Eighteenth-Century British America
Notes
List of Contributors
Index

Author Bios
Featured Contributor

Robert Olwell

Robert Olwell is an associate professor of history at the University of Texas, Austin.
Featured Contributor

Alan Tully

Alan Tully is a professor of history at the University of Texas, Austin.