The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction

by Bernard Bailyn

Overview

In this introduction to his large-scale work The Peopling of British North America, Bernard Bailyn identifies central themes in a formative passage of our history: the transatlantic transfer of people from the Old World to the North American continent that formed the basis of American society. Voyagers to the West, which covers the British migration in the years just before the American Revolution and is the first major volume in the Peopling project, is also available from Vintage Books.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307798466
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/08/2011
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	277,046
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Bernard Bailyn is Adams University Professor and James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History Emeritus at Harvard University. He founded, and for many years directed, the International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, which helped to reorient the study of the Atlantic region in the early modern era. His books include The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, which received the Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes in 1968; The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, which won the 1975 National Book Award for History; Voyagers to the West, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987; Atlantic History: Concept and Contours; The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600–1675, and Sometimes an Art: Nine Essays on History.

Editorial Reviews

Bailyn, prize-winning Harvard historian (Pulitzer, Bancroft, National Book Award), is writing a multivolume interpretive history of the transatlantic movement of people from Europe to America between 1500 and the Industrial Revolution. This volume, which introduces the series, will be followed by Voyages to the West announced for publication in the fall. Despite the outpouring of specialized studies, Bailyn notes, the transatlantic movement of some 50 million people remains a blur, a story without structure and scale. He shows how the findings of diverse scholars will be brought together in his series by following several lines of interpretation: that migration was an extension of European domestic mobility; led to the creation of widely varying American urban settlements; and (fired by labor needs and land speculation) gave rise by the early 18th century to an America that was a ``ragged outer margin'' of British culture. These themes whet appetites for what promises to be an important series. (June 3)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A magisterial statement that…begin[s] an exploration of how migration shaped American society and culture.
—Atlanta History

Thad W. Tate

Mr. Bailyn brings a new vividness, authenticity and excitement to the story of the settlement of North America….He sees the past in a more lively and human fashion, and in sharper detail, than have most previous historians….This is a rich canvas of a great folk—wandering over two centuries….If the introduction is any guide to what is to follow, the volumes to come will be treasure houses indeed.
—The New York Times Book Review

Esmond Wright

With a spare and delicate genius, [Bailyn] sketch[es] out the fiendishly complex essentials of a world where "everything seems strange close up."…Bernard Bailyn's work has a grandeur of a Braudel and the humanity of a Michelet. And he's got to the roots.
—The Guardian

Gwyn A. Williams

"Mr. Bailyn brings a new vividness, authenticity and excitement to the story of the settlement of North America....He sees the past in a more lively and human fashion, and in sharper detail, than have most previous historians....This is a rich canvas of a great folk-wandering over two centuries .... If the Introduction is any guide to what is to follow, the volumes to come will be treasure houses indeed."

— Esmond Wright, The New York Times Book Review

"With a spare and delicate genius, [Bailyn] sketch[es] out the fiendishly complex essentials of a world where 'everything seems strange close up.'... Bernard Bailyn's work has the grandeur of a Braudel and the humanity of a Michelet. And he's got to the roots."

— Gwyn A. Williams, The Guardian

From the Publisher