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212 books match the query 'Colonial Period (1600-1775)' and 4 start with n

cover of Native American Slavery in the Seventeenth Century

Native American Slavery in the Seventeenth Century

Arne Bialuschewski, special issue editor

Duke University Press, 2017

This issue sheds new light on the role of Native American slavery in the development of colonial economies and in shaping the colonial world across cultural and political boundaries. Though enslavement took various forms—from outright chattel to limited-term servitude—indigenous slavery was ubiquitous in the major colonial empires by the late seventeenth century. Focusing on five examples of Native American slavery in the early modern period, the contributors present important new frames for scholarship in this growing area of study. Articles address an early Spanish abolition campaign, buccaneers’ involvement in the enslavement of Maya groups, native slaves in the early plantation economy of Barbados, the enslavement of indigenous surrenderers after King Philip’s War, and the interactions between French explorers and indigenous slaves in the Lower Mississippi Valley.

Contributors. Carolyn Arena, Arne Bialuschewski, Linford D. Fisher, George Edward Milne, Andrés Reséndez
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cover of Native Wills from the Colonial Americas: Dead Giveaways in a New World

Native Wills from the Colonial Americas

Dead Giveaways in a New World

Mark Z. Christensen and Jonathan Truitt

University of Utah Press, 2015

Native Wills from the Colonial Americas showcases new testamentary sources from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. It provides readers with translations and analyses of wills written in Spanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya, K’iche’ Maya, Mixtec, and Wampanoag.

Divided into three thematic sections, the book provides insights and details that further our understanding of indigenous life in the Americas under colonial rule. Part One employs testaments to highlight the women of Native America and the ways their lives frequently challenged prescribed gender roles and statuses. Part Two uses testaments to illustrate the strategies of the elite in both negotiating and maintaining their power in a colonial, Spanish world. Part Three contributes to our understanding of the individual and collective nature of death by extracting from wills the importance of conversion, kinship, and societal ties in the colonial Americas. Capturing individual voices during dramatic periods of change, the documents presented here help us understand how cultures both adapt and persist. 


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cover of New Englanders in a New Land: Newark in the Proprietary Period, 1666-1702

New Englanders in a New Land

Newark in the Proprietary Period, 1666-1702

Timothy J. Crist

Rutgers University Press, 2027

New England Puritans from the former New Haven Colony settled Newark in 1666. Their fierce determination to establish scripture-based government in a close-knit township, with community control over admitting new inhabitants, often put them in direct conflict with New Jersey's proprietary government. Newark's egalitarian system for allocating land diverged sharply from the proprietors' headright approach, adapted from the West Indies and Carolina, that rewarded settler use of indentured servants and enslaved labor with larger distributions of land. 

This study provides a fresh interpretation of the founding and settlement of Newark as a self-contained New England community, including their negotiations with Native Americans, formation of godly self-government, gradual allocation of township land, and introduction of slavery. To implement their New England way, Newarkers resisted the proprietary government to the point of rebellion, bringing into stark relief the inherent conflict between two sources of authority, one scriptural and community-based and the other royal and proprietary, and two systems of land distribution.

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cover of No Longer Subjects of the British King: The Political Transformation of Royal Subjects to Republican Citizens, 1774–1776

No Longer Subjects of the British King

The Political Transformation of Royal Subjects to Republican Citizens, 1774–1776

Shawn David McGhee

Westholme Publishing, 2024

When news reached Parliament of the Boston radicals’ destruction of the Royal East India Company’s tea, it passed the Coercive Acts, a collection of punitive measures designed to rein in that insubordinate seaport town. The Coercive Acts unleashed a political firestorm as communities from Massachusetts to Georgia drafted resistance resolutions condemning Parliament’s perceived encroachment upon American liberty. Local leaders also directed colonists to refrain from purchasing British merchandise and forego theater, horse racing, and other perceived debauched traditions. Local activists next convened the Continental Congress to coordinate a pancolonial resistance movement to pressure Parliament into repealing the Coercive Acts and settling American rights on a constitutional foundation. Once convened, Congress deftly drafted the Articles of Association. Traditionally understood as primarily an economic response by the colonies to Parliament’s actions, the Continental Association called for public demonstrations of commercial and cultural restraint, conduct delegates hoped would both heal the empire and restore colonial virtue. 
Historian Shawn McGhee offers a fresh perspective on the origins of American political identity. No Longer Subjects of the British King: The Political Transformation of Royal Subjects to Republican Citizens, 1774-1776reveals the crucial process by which the Continental Association organized American towns and counties into a protonational community of suffering to protect political identities they felt under threat. This work further demonstrates how those sacrificing for the common cause severed their bonds of allegiance to the British king and separated from the broader imperial nation. In this crucible of austerity, they formed an American political community, completing the political transformation from subject to citizen.
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