Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts

by Richter, Daniel K.

• ISBN13: 9780674055803
• ISBN10: 0674055802
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-04-25
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

America began, we are often told, with the Founding Fathers, the men who waged a revolution and created a unique place called the United States. We may acknowledge the early Jamestown and Puritan colonists and mourn the dispossession of Native Americans, but we rarely grapple with the complexity of the nationrs"s pre-revolutionary past. In this pathbreaking revision, Daniel Richter shows that the United States has a much deeper history than is apparent-that far from beginning with a clean slate, it is a nation with multiple pasts that stretch back as far as the Middle Ages, pasts whose legacies continue to shape the present.Exploring a vast range of original sources, Before the Revolution spans more than seven centuries and ranges across North America, Europe, and Africa. Richter recovers the lives of a stunning array of peoples-Indians, Spaniards, French, Dutch, Africans, English-as they struggled with one another and with their own people for control of land and resources. Their struggles occurred in a global context and built upon the remains of what came before. Gradually and unpredictably, distinctive patterns of North American culture took shape on a continent where no one yet imagined there would be nations called the United States, Canada, or Mexico.By seeing these trajectories on their own dynamic terms, rather than merely as a prelude to independence, Richterrs"s epic vision reveals the deepest origins of American history.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Layered Pasts	p. 3
Progenitors
Legacies of Power from Medieval North America	p. 11
Legacies of Conquest from Medieval Europe	p. 37
Conquistadores
Crusades of the Christ-Bearers to the Americas	p. 67
Crusades of the Protestants to New Worlds	p. 88
Traders
Native Americans and the Power of Trade	p. 121
Epidemics, War, and the Remapping of a Continent	p. 143
Planters
Searching for Order in New and Old England	p. 171
Planting Patriarchy in New England and Virginia	p. 187
Dutch, French, Spanish, and English Counterpoints	p. 212
Imperialists
Monarchical Power Reborn	p. 241
Planters Besieged	p. 265
Revolution, War, and a New Transatlantic Order	p. 295
Atlanteans
Producing and Consuming in an Atlantic Empire	p. 327
People in Motion, Enslaved and Free	p. 346
Contending for a Continent	p. 369
Gloomy and Dark Days	p. 388
Epilogue: Present Pasts	p. 417
Notes	p. 425
Further Reading	p. 450
Credits	p. 462
Acknowledgments	p. 470
Index	p. 473
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