Colonial America

Colonial America: A History to 1763, 4th Edition providesupdated and revised coverage of the background, founding, anddevelopment of the thirteen English North American colonies. Fully revised and expanded fourth edition, with updatedbibliography Includes new coverage of the simultaneous development ofFrench, Spanish, and Dutch colonies in North America, andextensively re-written and updated chapters on families andwomen Features enhanced coverage of the English colony of Barbadosand trans-Atlantic influences on colonial development Provides a greater focus on the perspectives of NativeAmericans and their influences in shaping the development of thecolonies

The first title in the series is Exploration and Colonial America. It begins with a collection of exploration and colonial documents, including important journals of exploration, reports of New World settlements, early political tracts on self-governing. Also included are narratives on colonial life and slavery and indentured servitude.

"Bernard Bailyn gives us a compelling account of the first great transit of people from Britain, Europe, and Africa to British North America, their involvements with each other, and their struggles with the indigenous peoples of the eastern seaboard.             They were a mixed multitude—from England, the Netherlands, the German and Italian states, France, Africa, Sweden, and Finland. They moved to the western hemisphere for different reasons, from different social backgrounds and cultures, and under different auspices and circumstances. Even the majority that came from England fit no distinct socioeconomic or cultural pattern. They came from all over the realm, from commercialized London and the southeast; from isolated farmlands in the north still close to their medieval origins; from towns in the Midlands, the south, and the west; from dales, fens, grasslands, and wolds. They represented the entire spectrum of religious communions from Counter-Reformation Catholicism to Puritan Calvinism and Quakerism.      

The names "Jamestown" and "Plymouth" have become synonymous for most students of American history with "founding," and "birth"--both, of the American nation, and of freedom and democracy themselves. In this book, author Ted Lamont asks us to reconsider our country's formative years, and explore the stories, lives, achievements, and failures of America's earliest founding fathers: those who paved the way for the Colonial Era, and the American Revolution. They were explorers, investors, passionate religious leaders, and determined developers who struggled for generations to successfully plant the English flag in this strange new soil. Lamont deftly details the ways in which the stories and struggles of figures like Sir Walter Raleigh, Bartholomew Gosnold, Richard Hakluyt, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and Captain John Smith were not just related, but connected in ways that help us better understand the colonies and culture born of their efforts. The infancy of America-- from Roanoke's founding in 1585 through the firm establishment of Jamestown and Plymouth in 1625--is where we first see planted the seeds of the rest of America's colonial, economic, political, and cultural history, that was the immensely difficult, and often overlooked, first step toward the New World we are still working to perfect.