American Colonies: The Settling of North America

by Alan Taylor

A Book Review by Todd Searing

March 2009

American Colonies is an information-packed book. It executes its promised broad vision of North American colonies. It provides a wealth of ideas for pursuing further learning on any topic in the book. However, the text lacks specific references for the many quotations and statistics. The book is also weak in visuals and organizers other than regional maps, making it hard to process all the numerical data.

Alan Taylor’s explanation of his intentions is well-stated in the Introduction. The basic concept begins with the difference between saying “American colonies” versus “colonial America.” Colonial America has the connotation of the English colonization of the East Coast from New England south to Georgia. Taylor writes this book to explicitly cover multiple European nations, the mainland as well as islands, diverse groups of people, and the gamut of time periods involving colonies in North America. The book is designed as a synthesis of recent scholarship on early interactions on the continent. This is the first volume of a Penguin History of the United States series.

Taylor does an effective job of discussing the choices made when writing about a topic in a U.S. History series that largely took place before there was a United States. The book gets a lot of credit in existing reviews for its broad coverage of all people involved in establishing colonies and those affected by those colonies. Two other features deserve recognition as well. One is the decision to approach the timeline of American colonies differently depending on the region. American colonies in the East end at some point in the Revolutionary era, but on the Great Plains, West Coast, Alaska, or the Hawaiian Islands the colonizing story must extend considerably later. A second feature deserving special mention is the choice to approach this volume in a U.S. History series as an account of North American colonies. The impact of the French experience in Canadian areas north of the Great Lakes on native relations all the way to the Carolinas or the horrible, but all too familiar, Russian treatment of Aleut natives allow a depth of understanding not possible if confined to present day borders.

The sources used in Taylor’s preparation of the book are organized in a bibliography. These sources provide plenty of information to further pursue any of the topics covered in the book. The bibliography is organized by chapter and then annotated as to the areas for which the author used the source. Unfortunately, the source information does not go beyond book titles and the topics for which they were used. No page numbers are given as citations for the many quotations and statistics integral to the stories told in the book. Sources are indicated for the images of drawings and engravings placed at the beginning of each chapter.

The lack of more specific citations or footnotes is especially unfortunate, because the quotations are interwoven excellently in the text. Well-known and often-quoted figures such as Ben Franklin pop up along the way, but many quotes seem to be from “everyday,” or at least less well-known people. In addition to the fascinating, but poorly documented quotes the book uses extensive supporting statistics. From population to finances, slavery to religion, the many numbers beg for a timeline to start recording the wealth of data so it can be better comprehended, compared, and contrasted. In short, use of the book to share information responsibly with others requires additional work to satisfy academic standards for valid documentation. It could be far stronger with specific footnotes as are found in many popular historical texts and additional visuals allowing easy analysis of the data.

American Colonies is organized into chapters telling stories one region of North America at a time. A few have a very specific focus on a topic, such as “Awakenings” dealing with religious movements along the East Coast. Most give an inclusive picture of the region during a given time period, but all focus on a defined area. Utilizing storytelling methods from popular novels, the author will leave a storyline in one region at an appropriate time, and return to it in chronological context or in relation to another region later. Obviously chapters organized by regions have some geographical context, but chronological sequencing is also taken into account. Taylor chooses to organize nineteen chapters into three parts, titled Encounters, Colonies, and Empires, indicating a clear progression of stages, if not exact years.

Throughout the book, the author does an effective job communicating the big picture and some themes across time, peoples and regions. Taylor does this through consistent reference to those themes. One theme carried throughout is racial dynamics. The expected cast of Europeans, Native Americans, Africans is given an almost infinite number of combinations by the book’s early job of setting the stage. Not only did Europeans constitute many different countries, but the variation within a single country often extended to the point of groups that could barely understand one another’s language if at all. Western European nations were far from the expected standard map we think of today. Native cultures not only covered widely differing environments and showed the expected differences, but had no image of themselves as part of one large group. It also did not take long for large numbers of mixed race individuals to begin finding their own places in North America. The author presents a convincing description of how race relations between blacks and whites developed in the southern English colonies. Early settlers in the area saw themselves as divided along class lines, placing poor whites at a similar level with Africans. However, relying on poor whites for militias, a tendency to give some basic rights to the “common” white man, and land ownership, began to give whites of all classes a common identity particularly in English colonies. (The origins of the Carolinas in settlement from the West Indies laid the foundation for especially pervasive inequality and harsh treatment.) This identity led to increasing separation of the less fortunate whites from blacks and the system of slavery, the impact of which still resonates today in the Americas.

Another theme carried through the book was interaction with native people and the introduction of new diseases, plants, animals, ideas, and people. This was especially interesting as it was seen to play out in unique ways on the canvas of so many different areas in North America. Resulting circumstances took many more paths than typical history textbooks illuminate, but always knowledge of the end result keeps a foreshadowing of sadness for the native people in mind. This theme reappeared often without feeling redundant. It led to hope that the introduction of guns or horses would play out differently this time, and it was different. However, through good storytelling, the book also made very clear why the many different stories across North America ended so unfortunately and similarly for native people.

The use of primary sources seems to be wonderful at times, but also leads to disappointment. As discussed earlier in regard to sources, the quotations used are well-placed and give an impact to many parts of the American story. This best feature weakens considerably without a lot of work by the reader of teacher to seek out specific citations. The primary source images at the start of each chapter do connect to events within the chapter. They are a good feature of the book, but there are about twenty of them in a book of nearly 500 pages. Another disappointment is that all the images with a clear indication from the source give appear to come from a European perspective. This may not be 100 percent true, but primary sources explicitly from a native or African perspective seem expected given the broad coverage promised and delivered in the writing.

In preparing to apply background knowledge to our experiences in Boston and the surrounding area, there are two particular things that stand out: Plymouth and Boston history and an indication of attitudes prior to the Lowell factory town appearing. Plymouth “Plantation” colony came first, preceding John Winthrop’s mass Great Migration to Boston by ten years. Both settlements endured one “starving winter,” but then enjoyed better fortune than the earlier attempt at Roanoke in present-day North Carolina or the costly success at Jamestown. For better or worse, the Native American groups around New England had less cohesion than those around the Chesapeake who formed at least a loose grouping of tribes.

Prior to 1689 the New England colonies, including both Massachusetts Bay (Boston) and Plymouth became part of the Dominion, a disliked grouping together of several colonies. This ended in 1689 following the Glorious Revolution in England. Two years later (just before the infamous events in Salem), Plymouth Colony was dissolved for incorporation into Massachusetts Bay Colony. Unlike other New England colonies that began with a royal charter (Bay Colony) or obtained one later (Connecticut and Rhode Island), Plymouth never succeeded in getting a charter from the crown. Massachusetts Bay Colony was given jurisdiction. Right from the beginning, the area had a radical government by all European and English standards, allowing liberal voting rights for the day in electing a governor, deputy governor, and council. This laid the groundwork for Massachusetts, the Boston area in particular to be the focus of English discontent with its American colonies.

During the build-up to the Declaration of Independence, some American colonists wanted to have industrial development like that in Britain. As a good piece of foundation leading up to teaching about Lowell’s factory town and child labor in the 1800’s, a quote from Ben Franklin stood out in this book. The last sentence of the extended quote discouraging desires for industry states, “And if they will be content to wear Rags like the Spinners and Weavers of England, they may make Cloths [sic] and Stuffs for all Parts of the World.” (as quoted in American Colonies, p. 440).

This book will inform classroom instruction by adding to my ability to accurately relate a fact-based narrative of American history. Many of the negatives about history textbooks seem to stem from an attempt to impose cause and effect on a story that is actually missing huge portions. To make the story appealing, textbook authors fill in a reason why something happened that allows things to seem to flow. Actually, the authors are inferring cause and effect that likely never existed to fill in gaps in the true events. Now, everyone may do that at times, but the message is to exercise caution, learn the facts where possible, examine the sources of information, and be honest when something you say is an opinion or hypothesis.

Three things stand out in Taylor’s work that will assist me in teaching history as a narrative. First, the explanation of race relations developing in the English colonies fills in some possible cause and effect. Reading this book gives me some ideas about how things went from early land ownership by some blacks in Virginia (Trotter, The African American Experience) to the horrors of chattel slavery. Second, this book added to the argument presented by Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel by illuminating the common elements in the demise of Native American resistance and equal trade. It goes far beyond Pontiac’s Rebellion and Red Shoes; many other examples of resistance or temporary equal-footing ended with the wearing away of skills under the influence of European-produced guns. The pervasive move toward reliance on goods only available through alliances with Europeans carries lessons for today’s technological world as well. Third, the cause and effect story of early America becomes much more sensible when events in the Eastern Hemisphere are not ignored. Taylor introduces enough about European events to provide a starting point for adding to this dimension of the story.

In conclusion, I recommend this book as a wealth of information, but with a word of caution about confirming sources. Any reader wanting to fill in gaps in a basic knowledge of American colonies should consider this book. It is an involved and time-consuming read, but could be used in parts rather than as a whole. Specifically, the introduction is recommended reading, the statistics may be valuable with time to pull them together for analysis, and the quotations are excellent with time to verify some of the non-specific sources in the bibliography.