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212 books match the query 'Colonial Period (1600-1775)' and 18 start with a
A History of the American Theatre from Its Origins to 1832
William Dunalp, Introduction by Tice L. Miller
University of Illinois Press, 2005
As America passed from a mere venue for English plays into a country with its own nationally regarded playwrights, William Dunlap lived the life of a pioneer on the frontier of the fledgling American theatre, full of adventures, mishaps, and close calls. He adapted and translated plays for the American audience and wrote plays of his own as well, learning how theatres and theatre companies operated from the inside out.
Dunlap's masterpiece, A History of American Theatre was the first of its kind, drawing on the author's own experiences. In it, he describes the development of theatre in New York, Philadelphia, and South Carolina as well as Congress's first attempts at theatrical censorship. Never before previously indexed, this edition also includes a new introduction by Tice L. Miller.
A Place in Common
Rethinking the History of Early DetroitKaren L. Marrero
Michigan State University Press, 2025
A Road Course in Early American Literature
Travel and Teaching from Atzlán to AmherstThomas Hallock
University of Alabama Press, 2021
Essays that fuse literary scholarship and personal travelogue to explore American identity
A Road Course in Early American Literature: Travel and Teaching from Atzlán to Amherst explores a two-part question: what does travel teach us about literature, and how can reading guide us to a deeper understanding of place and identity? Thomas Hallock charts a teacher’s journey to answering these questions, framing personal experiences around the continued need for a survey course covering early American literature up to the mid-nineteenth century.
Hallock approaches literary study from the overlapping perspectives of pedagogue, scholar, unrepentant tourist, husband, father, friend, and son. Building on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s premise that there is “creative reading as well as creative writing,” Hallock turns to the vibrant and accessible tradition of American travel writing, employing the form of biblio-memoir to bridge the impasse between public and academic discourse and reintroduce the dynamic field of early American literature to wider audiences.
Hallock’s own road course begins and ends at the Low country of Georgia and South Carolina, following a circular structure of reflection. He weaves his journey through a wide swath of American literatures and authors: from Native American and African American oral traditions, to Wheatley and Equiano, through Emerson, Poe, and Dickinson, among others. A series of longer, place-oriented narratives explore familiar and lesser-known literary works from the sixteenth-century invasion of Florida through the Mexican War of 1846–1848 and the American Civil War. Shorter chapters bridge the book’s central themes—the mapping of cognitive and physical space, our personal stake in reading, the tensions that follow earlier acts of erasure, and the impossibility of ever fully shutting out the past.
Exploring complex cultural histories and contemporary landscapes filled with ghosts and new voices, this volume draws inspiration from a tradition of travel, place-oriented, and literature-based works ranging from William Carlos Williams’s In the American Grain and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Wendy Lesser’s Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books, and Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch.
An accompanying bibliographic essay is periodically updated and available at Hallock’s website: www.roadcourse.us.
A Rumor of Revolt
The "Great Negro Plot" in Colonial New YorkT. J. Davis
University of Massachusetts Press, 1990
This groundbreaking historical examination analyzes the 1741 New York Conspiracy trials: a pivotal moment in colonial American history when the city's legal system prosecuted an alleged slave conspiracy with severe and controversial consequences. Thomas J. Davis meticulously reconstructs the trials and executions that resulted from this supposed uprising, providing crucial insights into the intersection of race, ethnicity, legal practice, and social control in colonial New York.
During the spring and summer of 1741, New York authorities conducted dramatic trials in response to fears of a coordinated slave rebellion. Between May 11 and August 29, 1741, the city executed 35 individuals: thirteen Black men were burned at the stake, seventeen Black men were hanged, and two white men and two white women were also executed. These brutal punishments reflected the city's intense fear and the racialized nature of colonial justice.
Davis's analysis examines the primary source material to investigate what this historical episode reveals about colonial New York's racial hierarchies, ethnic tensions, and legal systems. The work scrutinizes the trials themselves, asking critical questions: Was there truly a conspiracy, or was the event primarily a product of hysteria and rumor? How did racial prejudices, economic anxieties, and the structure of colonial authority shape legal proceedings?
Beyond the courtroom drama, Davis explores the broader implications of these trials for understanding slavery in northern colonies, where enslaved people were not as visible but equally integral to colonial society. The book demonstrates how fear, whether grounded in reality or stoked by rumor, could mobilize entire communities and transform legal systems into instruments of racialized control. This work has become essential reading for understanding how colonial societies constructed narratives of racial threat and employed legal mechanisms to enforce racial subordination.
A Salem Witch
The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca NurseDaniel A. Gagnon
Westholme Publishing, 2023
The accusations against Nurse, a well-respected member in the community, seemed unbelievable. Unflinchingly, this ailing elderly woman insisted on her innocence and refused to falsely confess. Supported by many in Salem, Nurse’s family and neighbors challenged her accusers in court and prepared a thorough defense for her, yet nothing could surmount the fear of witchcraft, and she was sentenced to death. Nurse, seen as a martyr for the truth, later became the first person accused of witchcraft to be memorialized in North America.
In A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse, the first full account of Nurse’s life, Daniel A. Gagnon vividly recreates seventeenth-century Salem, and in the process challenges previous interpretations of Nurse’s life and the 1692 witch hunt in general. Through primary source research, he reveals how the Nurse family’s role in several disputes prior to the witch hunt was different than previously thought, as well as how Nurse’s case helps answer the important question of whether the accusations of witchcraft were caused by mental illness or malicious intent. A Salem Witch reveals a remarkable woman whose legacy has transformed how the witch hunt has been remembered and memorialized.
A Tale of Two Colonies
What Really Happened in Virginia and Bermuda?Virginia Bernhard
University of Missouri Press, 2011
Accidental Pluralism
America and the Religious Politics of English Expansion, 1497-1662Evan Haefeli
University of Chicago Press, 2021
Africa in America
Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736-1831Michael Mullin
University of Illinois Press, 1992
Aguecheek's Beef, Belch's Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections
Literature, Culture, and Food Among the Early ModernsRobert Appelbaum
University of Chicago Press, 2006
Alabama Justice
The Cases and Faces That Changed a NationSteven P. Brown
University of Alabama Press, 2020
WINNER OF THE ANNE B. & JAMES B. MCMILLAN PRIZE IN SOUTHERN HISTORY
Examines the legacies of eight momentous US Supreme Court decisions that have their origins in Alabama legal disputes.
Unknown to many, Alabama has played a remarkable role in a number of Supreme Court rulings that continue to touch the lives of every American. In Alabama Justice: The Cases and Faces That Changed a Nation, Steven P. Brown has identified eight landmark cases that deal with religion, voting rights, libel, gender discrimination, and other issues, all originating from legal disputes in Alabama.
Written in a concise and accessible manner, each case law chapter begins with the circumstances that created the dispute. Brown then provides historical and constitutional background for the issue followed by a review of the path of litigation. Excerpts from the Court’s ruling in the case are also presented, along with a brief account of the aftermath and significance of the decision. The First Amendment (New York Times v. Sullivan), racial redistricting (Gomillion v. Lightfoot), the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Frontiero v. Richardson), and prayer in public schools (Wallace v. Jaffree) are among the pivotal issues stamped indelibly by disputes with their origins in Alabama legal, political, and cultural landscapes. By examining such landmark twentieth-century milestones and eras such as the Scottsboro Boys trial, the Civil Rights movement, and the fight for women’s rights through a legal lens, Brown sheds new and unexpected light on the ways that events in Alabama have shaped the nation.
In addition to his analysis of cases, Brown discusses the three associate Supreme Court justices from Alabama to the Supreme Court: John McKinley, John Archibald Campbell, and Hugo Black. Their cumulative influence on constitutional interpretation, the institution of the Court, and the day-to-day rights and liberties enjoyed by every American is impossible to measure. A closing chapter examines the careers and contributions of these three Alabamians.
America's Early Whalemen
Indian Shore Whalers on Long Island, 1650–1750John A. Strong
University of Arizona Press, 2018
America’s Early Whalemen examines this early chapter of an iconic American historical experience. John A. Strong’s research draws on exhaustive sources, domestic and international, including little-known documents such as the whaling contracts of 340 Native American whalers, personal accounting books of whaling company owners, London customs records, estate inventories, and court records. Strong addresses labor relations, the role of alcohol and debt, the patterns of cultural accommodations by Native Americans, and the emergence of corporate capitalism in colonial America.
When Strong began teaching at Long Island University in 1964, he found little mention of the local Indigenous people in history books. The Shinnecocks and the neighboring tribes of Unkechaugs and Montauketts were treated as background figures for the celebratory narrative of the “heroic” English settlers. America’s Early Whalemen highlights the important contributions of Native peoples to colonial America.
American Creed
Philanthropy and the Rise of Civil Society, 1700-1865Kathleen D. McCarthy
University of Chicago Press, 2003
The market revolution, participatory democracy, and voluntary associations have all been closely linked since the birth of the United States. American Creed explores the relationships among these three institutions, showing how charities and reform associations forged partnerships with government, provided important safety valves for popular discontent, and sparked much-needed economic development. McCarthy also demonstrates how the idea of philanthropy became crucially wedded to social activism during the Jacksonian era. She explores how acts of volunteerism and charity became involved with the abolitionist movement, educational patronage, the struggle against racism, and female social justice campaigns. What resulted, she contends, were heated political battles over the extent to which women and African Americans would occupy the public stage.
Tracing, then, the evolution of civil society and the pivotal role of philanthropy in the search for and exercise of political and economic power, this book will prove essential to anyone interested in American history and government.
American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century
"For Use or for Delight"Ann Leighton
University of Massachusetts Press, 1976
American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century is the second of three authoritative volumes of garden history by Ann Leighton. This entertaining book focuses on eighteenth-century gardens and gardening. Leighton's material for the book was drawn from letters, journals, invoices, and books of men and women who were interested in the plants of the New and Old World. Throughout the book are illustrations and descriptive listings of native and new plants that were cultivated during the eighteenth century.
Companion volumes by Ann Leighton
Early American Gardens “For Meate or Medicine”
American Gardens of the Nineteenth Century “For Comfort and Affluence”
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith
University of Chicago Press, 1977
Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was recognized as a landmark of immediately upon publication in 1776. As the first serious, data-driven argument for the principles of political economy, it is the point of departure for all subsequent economic thought. Smith's argument that human self-interest is the primary driver of economic activity, and that in aggregate that self-interest--acting through a market freed from government intervention-guides markets and economies toward the best outcomes for business and society, remains foundational for contemporary free-market economics.
This edition presents the definitive 1904 version of The Wealth of Nations, painstakingly edited by Edwin Cannan and featuring Cannan's illuminating introduction, and notes, as well as a a full index. An additional preface by distinguished economist George J. Stigler places Smith's book and thought in a contemporary context. The result is the best edition of this classic for students and general readers alike.
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
The Definitive EditionAdam Smith
University of Chicago Press, 0
The book that made the modern world, reissued in its definitive scholarly form and featuring a new foreword from Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen.
First published in 1776, Adam Smith’s masterwork The Wealth of Nations formalized the first unified theory of modern economies—how human nature, public institutions, and private interests can coalesce in a society greater than the sum of its parts. More than 250 years later, it remains one of humanity’s most defining and lasting literary works.
This definitive edition includes Edwin Cannan’s famous annotations of the original text, accounting for both Smith’s early drafts and his lectures at the University of Glasgow, where he originated the book’s concepts. The result is the most complete edition of the work to date, maintaining unprecedented fidelity to Smith’s ideas and packaging them in fluent and elevating terms.
In a new foreword, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen offers context and contemporary incision for twenty-first-century readers, discussing the uses—and occasional misuses—of Smith’s ideas for the advancement of political agendas. The Wealth of Nations, Sen makes clear, is a book about societies, not just economies. “Smith’s economics accommodated his values,” he writes. As readers of The Wealth of Nations will discover and rediscover, those values prioritized the lives of everyday working people above all else.
Another's Country
Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on Cultural Interactions in the Southern ColoniesEdited by J.W. Joseph and Martha Zierden
University of Alabama Press, 2001
The 18th-century South was a true melting pot, bringing together colonists from England, France, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, and other locations, in addition to African slaves—all of whom shared in the experiences of adapting to a new environment and interacting with American Indians. The shared process of immigration, adaptation, and creolization resulted in a rich and diverse historic mosaic of cultures.
The cultural encounters of these groups of settlers would ultimately define the meaning of life in the nineteenth-century South. The much-studied plantation society of that era and the Confederacy that sprang from it have become the enduring identities of the South. A full understanding of southern history is not possible, however, without first understanding the intermingling and interactions of the region’s eighteenth-century settlers. In the essays collected here, some of the South’s leading historical archaeologists examine various aspects of the colonial experience, attempting to understand how cultural identity was expressed, why cultural diversity was eventually replaced by a common identity, and how the various cultures intermeshed.
Written in accessible language, this book will be valuable to archaeologists and non-archaeologists alike. Cultural, architectural, and military historians, cultural anthropologists, geographers, genealogists, and others interested in the cultural legacy of the South will find much of value in this book.
Ariel's Ecology
Plantations, Personhood, and Colonialism in the American TropicsMonique Allewaert
University of Minnesota Press, 2013
What happens if we abandon the assumption that a person is a discrete, world-making agent who acts on and creates place? This, Monique Allewaert contends, is precisely what occurred on eighteenth-century American plantations, where labor practices and ecological particularities threatened the literal and conceptual boundaries that separated persons from the natural world.
Integrating political philosophy and ecocriticism with literary analysis, Ariel’s Ecology explores the forms of personhood that developed out of New World plantations, from Georgia and Florida through Jamaica to Haiti and extending into colonial metropoles such as Philadelphia. Allewaert’s examination of the writings of naturalists, novelists, and poets; the oral stories of Africans in the diaspora; and Afro-American fetish artifacts shows that persons in American plantation spaces were pulled into a web of environmental stresses, ranging from humidity to the demand for sugar. This in turn gave rise to modes of personhood explicitly attuned to human beings’ interrelation with nonhuman forces in a process we might call ecological.
Certainly the possibility that colonial life revokes human agency haunts works from Shakespeare’s Tempest and Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws to Spivak’s theories of subalternity. In Allewaert’s interpretation, the transformation of colonial subjectivity into ecological personhood is not a nightmare; it is, rather, a mode of existence until now only glimmering in Che Guevara’s dictum that postcolonial resistance is synonymous with “perfect knowledge of the ground.”
Asian American History
Huping Ling
Rutgers University Press, 2023
Asian American History provides a comprehensive historical dive into Asian immigration to the United States, exploring it in international and domestic contexts and alongside the significant elements that define Asian America: imperialism and global capitalist expansion; labor and capital; race and ethnicity; immigration and exclusion; family and work; community and gender roles; assimilation and multiculturalism; panethnicity and identity; transnationalism and globalization; and new challenges and opportunities. Huping Ling traces the roots of Asian immigration from the late 1700s through intervening centuries of racial prejudice, wartime experiences, legal restrictions, and social mobility into the 2010s. It is an up-to-date and easily accessible resource for high school and college students as well as anyone who is interested in Asian American history.