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43 results

Page 1 of 3

  • Introduction: What Does America and the World “Mean” before 1825?

  • Edited by Eliga Gould, University of New Hampshire, Paul Mapp, College of William and Mary, Virginia, Carla Gardina Pestana, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of America and the World
    Published online:
    12 November 2021
    Print publication:
    03 March 2022, pp 8-34

  • Summary

    Studying “America and the World” in the period before the advent of the United States carries a different meaning than it does after 1776. As used by historians of the modern United States, as in the other volumes in this series, America and the world usually refers to the foreign policy and global interactions of the American republic, with the United States occupying the role of an independent power and, increasingly, an empire. This volume calls for a different agenda: to understand how the United States emerged out of a series of colonial interactions, some involving Indigenous empires and communities that were already present when the first Europeans reached the Americas; others the adventurers and settlers dispatched by Europe’s imperial powers to secure their American claims; and still others men and women brought as slaves or indentured servants to the colonies that European settlers founded. For most of the 300 years after the first European voyages of discovery, we use America to refer not to a single political entity, much less an empire, but rather to a space within which other states, peoples, and empires, many of them centered outside the Western Hemisphere, interacted and vied for supremacy and control.

The Cambridge History of America and the World
  • Volume 1, 1500–1820
  • Edited by Eliga Gould, Paul Mapp, Carla Gardina Pestana
  • Published online:
    12 November 2021
    Print publication:
    03 March 2022
  • The first volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World examines how the United States emerged out of a series of colonial interactions, some involving indigenous empires and communities that were already present when the first Europeans reached the Americas, others the adventurers and settlers dispatched by Europe's imperial powers to secure their American claims, and still others men and women brought as slaves or indentured servants to the colonies that European settlers founded. Collecting the thoughts of dynamic scholars working in the fields of early American, Atlantic, and global history, the volume presents an unrivalled portrait of the human richness and global connectedness of early modern America. Essay topics include exploration and environment, conquest and commerce, enslavement and emigration, dispossession and endurance, empire and independence, new forms of law and new forms of worship, and the creation and destruction when the peoples of four continents met in the Americas.

  • 1 - Reworking Reformation in the Early English Atlantic

  • Edited by Ulinka Rublack, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    Protestant Empires
    Published online:
    20 August 2020
    Print publication:
    10 September 2020, pp 30-55

  • Summary

    The best-known case of early American religious migrants is that of Plymouth Plantation. Valorized in US national mythology for enduring hardship to practise freedom of religion, the story of Plymouth is a famous example of the supposed commitment to religious liberty. For the many Christian commentators who have dug deeper than the first Thanksgiving, Plymouth connects the story of the Reformation in England to the founding of the United States, telling the tale of a separatist rebellion against the Church of England that led to exile, suffering, and a Christian founding. A close consideration of Plymouth Plantation’s early history reveals that Plymouth, far from being a unique case of pious commitment struggling with and triumphing over American challenges, experienced all the difficulties involved in exporting the Reformation. Plymouth church confronted all the same challenges of staffing, membership, and religious practice of any migrant church. At the same time, their storied commitment to separatism proved weaker and less permanent than their modern champions like to assert. This case study allows for a reconsideration of the process of exporting Reformation even as it upends one of the most central myths of the American founding.

  • State Formation from the Vantage of Early English Jamaica: The Neglect of Edward Doyley

  • Carla Gardina Pestana
  • Journal:
    Journal of British Studies / Volume 56 / Issue 3 / July 2017
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    14 July 2017, pp. 483-505

  • Edward Doyley led English Jamaica for most of its first decade. Sent as part of a military force intent on conquering the island, he rose to a position of command in the army as a result of his survival and seniority. Eventually he took charge of the navy and civilian affairs as well. Wielding theoretically vast powers he lacked official authorization from any central authority for much of his tenure. His correspondence requesting support for the island reveals the needs of a newly conquered colony, enumerating the requirements that an expanding imperial center must fill as England moved more decisively toward engagement in the wider world. Scholarly debates over state building that emphasize military and naval expansion as a driving force, and debates about state formation focusing on negotiations between central and local authorities, speak to the experience of early Jamaica. Doyley's circumstances place him in a position between the two ideal situations described in that literature.

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