Draggingtree Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 How Our East Was Won The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: the Conflict of Civilizations, 1600–1675, Bernard Bailyn, Alfred A. Knopf, 640 pages By Gene Callahan • October 23, 2013 Bernard Bailyn is one of the giants of early American historical scholarship. In recent years he has been engaged in a project “to give an account of the peopling of British North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” Barbarous Years is the most recently released product of that effort. As we have come to expect from Bailyn, it is a magisterial work, which, for any reader interested in this period, more than repays the serious attention it requires. (The book is over 500 pages and dense in detail.) Barbarous Years covers the period from the first permanent English settlements on the continent through King Phillip’s War. Besides discussing the English in the Chesapeake area and New England, this work also considers the Swedish and Dutch settlements along the Delaware and Hudson rivers. (South Carolina, founded in 1670, is left out.) Throughout this period the European toehold on the edge of the North American continent was precarious, and it was the sense of fragility, as well as the mutual incomprehension between the Europeans and Indians, that, Bailyn contends, made these years “barbarous.” Everything was uncertain in the new world being created by this clash of cultures. The constant threat felt to the very existence not just of oneself but of one’s whole community led to desperately brutal acts on the part of natives and newcomers alike. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-our-east-was-won/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepper Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 @Draggingtree I am anxiously awaiting the sequel "How Our Ass Was Lost" Oh wait, didn't that already happen in 2008? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NCTexan Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 @Draggingtree I am awaiting sequel "How Our Ass Was Lost" Oh wait, didn't that already happen in 2008? @Pepper Regarding the unfortunate events of 2008.... It could also be said, "How Their Ass Won." 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepper Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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