American Colonies: The Settling of North America is a book about early American history by Alan Taylor, first published on November 12, 2001, by Viking Press.[1] It is the first volume of the Penguin History of the United States.[2]
 First paperback edition, July 30, 2002 | |
| Author | Alan Taylor |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
Publication date | November 12, 2001 |
| Pages | 526 |
The book is divided into three major parts: "Encounters", "Colonies", and "Empires".[2] These sections discuss, respectively, the colonial encounter between European settlers and the Indigenous peoples in North America, including through colonial projects such as New Spain; colonies such as the New England Colonies and the province of Carolina; and imperial domains including New France and British America.[2] American Colonies rejects American exceptionalism, focusing on slavery and the displacement and depopulation of Indigenous peoples.[3] It employs the methods of social history and environmental history, among other approaches.[4]
Andrew Cayton describes the book as a "balanced synthesis" of a trend in historical scholarship emphasizing the pluralism and diversity of colonial-era North America, a place in which Indigenous people of the Americas and enslaved Africans, as well as Europeans, created novel social arrangements.[5] A starred review in Publishers Weekly likewise noted that American Colonies "challenges traditional Anglocentric interpretations of colonial history by focusing more evenly on the myriad influences on North America's development".[6] Osita Nwanevu, in a retrospective review of American Colonies along with Taylor's later works American Revolutions and American Republics, noted that American Colonies is organized in a more conventional, chronological manner than the other two, which focus on themes.[7]
References
edit- ^ "American Colonies". Kirkus Reviews. September 1, 2001. Archived from the original on October 14, 2021. Retrieved October 13, 2021.
- ^ a b c Henretta, James A. (December 2002). "American Colonies". The Journal of American History. 89 (3): 1019–1020. doi:10.2307/3092359. JSTOR 3092359.
- ^ Smith, Daniel Blake (2001). "Review of American Colonies". The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society. 99 (4): 405–407. ISSN 0023-0243. JSTOR 23384806.
- ^ Dowd, Gregory Evans (2003). "Review of American Colonies". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 127 (1): 106–109. ISSN 0031-4587. JSTOR 20093604.
- ^ Cayton, Andrew R. L. (December 2, 2001). "The Way We Were". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on April 9, 2021. Retrieved October 14, 2021.
- ^ "American Colonies". Publishers Weekly. Archived from the original on September 30, 2016. Retrieved October 13, 2021.
- ^ Nwanevu, Osita (August 24, 2021). "The Incoherence of American History". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Archived from the original on October 6, 2021. Retrieved October 14, 2021.