[Warren] builds on and generously acknowledges more than two generations of research into the social history of New England and the economic history of the Atlantic world. But not only has she mastered that scholarship, she has also brought it together in an original way, and deepened the story with fresh research…What is most fascinating here is the detailed rendering of what individual enslaved men and women experienced in New England households. New England Bound conveys the disorientation, the deprivation, the vulnerability, the occasional hunger and the profound isolation that defined the life of most African exiles in Puritan New England, where there was no plantation community. Though the surviving record allows limited access to their thoughts, Warren effectively evokes their feelings.
New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America
Narrated by Elizabeth Wiley
Wendy WarrenUnabridged — 10 hours, 4 minutes
New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America
Narrated by Elizabeth Wiley
Wendy WarrenUnabridged — 10 hours, 4 minutes
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Overview
Using original research culled from dozens of archives, Warren conclusively links the growth of the northern colonies to the Atlantic slave trade, showing how seventeenth-century New England's fledgling economy derived its vitality from the profusion of ships that coursed through its ports, passing through on their way to and from the West Indian sugar colonies. What's more, leading New England families like the Winthrops and Pynchons invested heavily in the West Indies, owning both land and human property, the profits of which eventually wended their way back north. That money, New England Bound shows, was the tragic fuel for the colonial wars of removal and replacement of New England Indians that characterized the initial colonization of the region.
Editorial Reviews
03/14/2016
Countering the historiography of colonial New England that’s focused on Puritans and Native Americans, Warren, an assistant professor of history at Princeton, elegantly makes clear how “the shadow of an Atlantic slave trade darkened even the earliest interactions between Europeans and Indians in New England.” Readers familiar with the Salem witch trials will recognize the figure of Tituba, the Carib Indian slave of the community’s minister and the alleged instigator of the rituals that sparked the hysteria; Warren reveals that enslaved Africans were far from anomalous in these colonies, having arrived as early as 1638. Leading New England merchants, many of whom had close ties of kinship and business with the English plantation colonies in the West Indies, were heavily invested in the transatlantic trade in humans. Even less elite residents of these colonies—including sailors, artisans, and farmwives—were aware of and profited, directly or indirectly, from the presence of slaves in their communities. By describing the lived experiences of these slaves, Warren adds a new and surprising dimension to the oft-told story of the New England colonies—one that offers much-needed revision and complication of the simple and comforting myths of intercultural friendship and virtuous endeavor. Illus. (June)
"In New England Bound, Wendy Warren builds a powerful case for the centrality of slavery to the economy of the Puritan colonies in the North."
"A major contribution to the history of enslavement, of African Americans, of early New England society, and—most important—of the sinews and tissues at the center of the whole complex process we call 'colonization.' The research that supports it is ingenious, the argument compelling, the prose lucid and graceful."
"A beautifully written, humane and finely researched work that makes clear how closely intermingled varieties of slavery and New England colonization were from the very start. With great skill, Warren does full justice to the ideas of the individuals involved, as well as to the political and economic imperatives that drove some, and that trapped and gravely damaged others."
"[Warren] widens the lens to show the early New England economy was enmeshed in the seafaring trade that developed between four Atlantic continents for the transport, clothing, and feeding of African captives. The region’s early growth and prosperity, Warren shows, sprang from that tainted commerce. . . . Southerners resentful of Northerners’ condescension about the slaveholding past may find some comfort in these pages. In them should be some Northern discomfort too."
"'Slavery was in England’s American colonies, even its New England colonies, from the very beginning,' explains Princeton historian Wendy Warren in her deeply thoughtful, elegantly written New England Bound....The greatest revelations of New England Bound lie in Warren’s meticulous reconstruction of slavery in colonial New England....Warren pores over the patchy archival record with a probing eye and an ear keen to silences."
"Whereas most studies of slavery in the United States concern the antebellum South, this one stakes out less visited territory—the laws and decisions made by the colonists in New England two centuries earlier."
"Historians have written penetratingly on North American colonial racism and slavery—Edmund Morgan, Alden Vaughan, Ira Berlin, for starters—but New England Bound is a smart contribution to the New England story, a panoptical exploration of how slavery took root like a weed in the crack of a sidewalk. . . . What we have in this account is sharp explication of the ‘deadly symbiosis’ of colonization and slavery, written with a governed verve that perks like a coffee pot. It makes the New England story that much fuller, challenging, and more accountable."
"[Warren] builds on and generously acknowledges more than two generations of research into the social history of New England and the economic history of the Atlantic world. But not only has she mastered that scholarship, she has also brought it together in an original way, and deepened the story with fresh research…New England Bound conveys the disorientation, the deprivation, the vulnerability, the occasional hunger and the profound isolation that defined the life of most African exiles in Puritan New England, where there was no plantation community."
"A bracing and fearless inquiry into the intricate web of slavery and empire into which all New Englanders were bound. Ardently argued, and urgently necessary."
"With intrepid research and stunning narrative skill, Wendy Warren demonstrates how much seventeenth-century New England societies were dependent on the West Indian slave trade, and especially on the labor, bodies, and lives of black slaves. Warren has turned the prophetic lessons of Ecclesiastes back upon the Puritan fathers with scholarly judgment, humanizing both them and the people they enslaved. This book is an original achievement, the kind of history that chastens our historical memory as it makes us wiser."
"New England Bound is a book of revelations. Not only does Wendy Warren cast startling new light on early America, not only does she uncover how racial slavery was woven into the fabric of New England from the very beginning, but she also shows how forgotten folk—people long thought lost to history—can be brought to light, and to life, if we look, and listen, for their stories. A remarkable achievement."
"Wendy Warren's deeply researched and powerfully written New England Bound opens up a new vista for the study of slavery and race in the United States. It will transform our thinking about seventeenth-century New England."
"A much-needed correction in the perception of slavery, this work will be enjoyed by those interested in the history of colonial North America and the transatlantic world." ---Library Journal
Whereas most studies of slavery in the United States concern the antebellum South, this one stakes out less visited territory—the laws and decisions made by the colonists in New England two centuries earlier.
"A much-needed correction in the perception of slavery, this work will be enjoyed by those interested in the history of colonial North America and the transatlantic world." —Library Journal
06/01/2016
For too long slavery has been exclusively identified with the American South. Long forgotten has been New England's complex relationship with the institution. Beginning in the mid-17th century, New England invested liberally in the slave trade and depended extensively on slave labor, both African and Native American, to create the prosperity that came to fruition in the 18th century. Although similar in the South, slavery in New England differed in some essential elements. Enslaved labor was largely invisible because slave work was indistinguishable from the free labor of their English counterparts, and slaves comprised a small percentage of New England's population. The Puritans were able to build significant wealth through their trading in human chattel. Warren (history, Princeton Univ.) demonstrates that New England merchants successfully integrated their enterprises into the Atlantic trading economy of the 17th century, buying and selling laborers on plantations in the West Indies. It was on the sugar plantations on island colonies where great hardships were endured while working in the hazardous enterprise of sugar production. VERDICT A much-needed correction in the perception of slavery, this work will be enjoyed by those interested in the history of colonial North America and the transatlantic world. [See Prepub Alert, 3/23/16.]—Glen Edward Taul, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY
2016-03-22
A history of the strong beginnings of American slavery in the 17th century.Many of us think of slavery in America as an aspect of the 19th-century Deep South, but Warren (History/Princeton Univ.) astutely shows how New Englanders were quick to join in the buying and selling of both Indian and African slaves. In fact, slavery was an intrinsic part of their economy, unifying the Atlantic world through goods and services bought with earnings off slaves and slave-made products. In 1641, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties formed the basis for slave codes, banning bond-slavery with the exception of "lawful captives taken in just wars." The Massachusetts Bay Colony and other entities exported Indians taken in local wars and imported Africans for whom wars were waged abroad. Indians were unsatisfactory slaves as they were rebellious and prone to escape or suicide. Consequently, Indians were "dumped" in the West Indies in exchange for sugar, tobacco, and African slaves. While some have said New England was key to the Indies economy, which relied on the food and cattle sent along with slaves, the author points out that the colonists were dependent on the profits from property and markets in the Indies. Warren analyzes a wealth of 17th-century correspondence, journals, court records, wills, and other documents, and she has maintained original spelling and grammar in order to save the sense of that world. It certainly accomplishes that, but it may slow some readers trying to understand the context, and Warren occasionally gets bogged down in examples of legal documents, particularly in long lists of wills, revealing estates that included a few slaves. New England slavery was not the same as plantation slavery, where slaves were worked to death for a single crop. Rather, most were sold into domestic servitude, often as a single slave with no community. For students of early American history, this is an eye-opening book about Puritans and Anglicans who disapproved of slavery but accepted it as a normal part of life and reaped its profits.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170899265 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tantor Audio |
| Publication date: | 12/06/2016 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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