Colonial New Research Articles

Rural Hydro-Electrification and the Colonial New Deal: Modernization, Experts, and Rural Life in Puerto Rico, 1935–1942

Rural Hydro-Electrification and the Colonial New Deal: Modernization, Experts, and Rural Life in Puerto Rico, 1935–1942

This is My Body: Communion and Cannibalism in Colonial New England and New France

Analyzing the material culture of English, French, and Native communion ceremonies, and debates over communion and cannibalism, this article argues that peoples in the borderlands between colonial New England and New France refused to recognize their cultural similarities, a cross-cultural failure of communication with violent consequences.

Sisters Crossing Boundaries. German Missionary Nuns in Colonial Togo and New Guinea, 1897–1960, written by Katharina Stornig

Sisters Crossing Boundaries. German Missionary Nuns in Colonial Togo and New Guinea, 1897–1960, written by Katharina Stornig

KONTRADIKSI YURISPRUDENSI KOMPETENSI ABSOLUT PENGADILAN AGAMA DALAM MENYELESAIKAN SENGKETA PERBANKAN SYARIAH

Contradictions Religious Court jurisprudence absolute competence in resolving disputes sticking Islamic banking since the advent of Law No. 21 of 2008 which includes choice of forum for dispute resolution litigation Islamic economy. This triggers legal uncertainty morning the parties. This contradiction is related to the question of the substantive law and procedural law as well as the politics of government laws as proposer is still influenced by the paradigm of colonial law and New Order. In fact, the legal political government is the policy of the law (legal policy) to be implemented at the national, among others, is in the development of laws that core law-making and reform of legal materials that are considered not relevant or appropriate to the needs of the creation of the law. Thus, the government proposal was passed that has hurt the national consensus, because article 55 (2) of Law No. 21 Year 2008 opened the space to settling disputes resolved under the laws of the colonial Dutch government that no longer fit with the culture of Indonesian culture. In addition, the government proposal was passed it was too much to interfere with the judicial realm, for the settlement of Islamic economy had previously been given to the Religious Courts by Law No. 3 of 2006. Keywords: Jurisprudence, Absolut, Islamic Banking

‘I am sorry it is not more, but it is all I could earn’: Presbyterian Children, Christmas and Charity in Colonial New Zealand, c.1909-1945

In February 1884 the Presbyterian mission ship The Dayspring departed the southern New Zealand city of Dunedin, en route back to the New Hebrides [Vanuatu] via Sydney, after completing a tour of the colony’s main centres. The Otago Daily Times reporter observed that in Dunedin the ship was visited by ‘close on 14,000 persons – children and adults’, with another ‘600 children’ as visitors prior to its departure from nearby Port Chalmers. The children inspected ‘various curios’ in the cabins and at least saw, if not interacted with, five ‘natives’ on board. These four men and one woman, from the New Hebrides, had ‘shown themselves to be possessed of much intelligence and observation’ who, through ‘missionary labour and Christian instruction’, had been ‘transformed from savage cannibals into peaceful, gentle Christians’ (‘The Dayspring’ 1884, p. 2).

In the Beginning: Taxation in Early Colonial New Zealand

For the first five years of the colonial period, from 1840 to 1845, the New Zealand government was insolvent, spiraling deeper and deeper into debt and failing to pay salaries and other bills. It conscientiously adopted the revenue-raising methods proposed by London (mainly land sales and customs duties) plus several others (notably liquor licensing, a tax on auctions, and borough council rates), but the revenues raised never came close to covering spending. In desperation, it resorted to borrowing, printing money and experimenting with an income tax – an extraordinarily innovative move in 1844. Unsurprisingly, none of these measures proved satisfactory. London blamed the Colony’s governors, but the real problem was that its economy was simply too small to sustain a government even remotely resembling the British colonial norm.

Whole Pots Full of Idolatrous Powdered Herbs

Scarce records documenting the use of peyote (Lophophora williamsii) in Spanish Colonial New Mexico prior to the 1680 Pueblo Revolt provide no indication of when or by whom it was introduced, or how frequently it might have been used by colonists and Native peoples. Used ritually throughout most of Mexico's Central Plateau and adjacent Sierra Madre, as well, among Aztec and Tarascan peoples at contact, its use by prehispanic Southwestern pueblo people has not been identified. Among the more conspicuous effects of taking peyote are visual phenomena, including the characteristic colors, red and yellow. “Sorcerer” and likely, a Tewa curing society member, Popé's vision of three “figures” in a kiva at Taos emitting “fire from all the extremities of their bodies,” I suggest, may indicate a heretofore unexpected role for peyote use in New Mexican history.

Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction Thomas D. Beal, D.L. Noorlander, and Susan Goodier This spring marks the 155 year anniversary of the start of the American Civil War. On April 12, 1861 Lt. Henry S. Farley of the Confederate States of America and Edmund Ruffin, the well-known Virginia secessionist, fired the first mortar and cannon shots on Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina. The shots not only marked the end of a period of political, social and cultural conflict, stretching back to at least the Missouri Compromise (1820) and perhaps to the ratification of the United States Constitution (1788), but also the beginning of one of the most significant moments in American history. It was not until April 16, 1861 that newspapers in New York published word of the attack on and surrender of Fort Sumter. The news left the State’s residents immobilized by fear and uncertainty. By April 18, those emotions gave way to an outburst of patriotism; for example, on that day over 250,000 people filled the air in New York City’s Union Square with patriotic shouts and vows to defend their nation’s government. Many volunteered to put down the insurrection that had divided the nation. By the time the war to reunify the nation ended, New York would provide more troops than any other state and New York City would become the nation’s magazine of material and arms.1 During the American Civil War, New York played a crucial role in reuniting a divided nation. As historians we research, write and teach about moments like the Civil War, and encourage students of history to critically examine the forces and issues that cause such divisions. There is no denying that our nation is once again at odds; evidence of political [End Page 120] and cultural conflict is ubiquitous. It is altogether fitting, then, that we offer these essays that explore the theme of dissent. In “Upstate New York on the Brink of War” Nick Thony examines the actions and ideology of one group of abolitionists, who were both celebrated and attacked (physically and verbally) during a series of lectures they staged across the state in 1861. In “From Home Front to Battlefront,” Jeremy Youngs explores the experience of soldiers who had the privilege of fighting alongside a brother during the Civil War. Bullets, battlefields, capture and death often separated brother from brother. In his “Pelts and Prosperity” Nolan M. Cool describes how geography, culture and the search for trade required colonial New York’s merchants and Native Peoples to negotiate a borderland ripe with conflict. Finally, Inmaaculada Lara-Bonilla’s “Crafting a Latina/o Higher Education Rights Discourse in New York” casts Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College as a crucial site of urban intersectionality. Along with a large number of book reviews we offer readers these thoughtful essays on New York’s history. Producing each issue of New York History is a privilege and a challenge. The Editors have come to rely on colleagues, friends and especially a hardworking and committed group of Research Assistants. Budding historians Michael Speziale, Orlanzo Wright, Alexandria Robison, Cody Martel, Hunter Reed, Natalie Newton, Sam Benedict, and Zachary Utter helped us produce this issue. During their time as Research Assistants, they shared our commitment to expanding the reach, influence and quality of each issue of New York History. We thank readers who have sent words of criticism or encouragement; they help us produce a better product. If you have questions or comments about the journal’s contents, we encourage you to contact us by electronic mail at publications@nysha.org. [End Page 121] Footnotes 1. James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 234–275; Robert Lebby, “The First Shot on Fort Sumter,” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 12 (1911): 141–145; William R. Taylor, Cavalier & Yankee: The Old South and American National Character (1961, reprint; New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 60, 61, 62, 65, 114, 296; New York not only led the way in volunteerism, but also it lost more men than any other state in the Union. See, Frederick Phisterer, comp., New York in the...

Articles and Publications

Articles and Publications Christopher Densmore and Barbara Addison Mysticism and Reform, 1400–1750, edited by Sara S. Poor and Nigel Smith (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015) includes a chapter by Genelle C. Gertz, “Quaker Mysticism as the Return of the Medieval Repressed: English Women Prophets Before and After the Reformation.” Kristianna Polder, Matrimony in the True Church: the Seventeenth-Century Quaker Marriage Approbation Discipline (Burlington: Ashgate, 2015) examines marriage among English Friends, with particular attention to the marriage of George Fox and Margaret Fell. Elizabeth Bouldin, Women Prophets and Radical Protestantism in the British Atlantic World, 1640–1730 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015) includes a chapter, “Female Prophecy, Election, and the Transatlantic Quaker Community” and other references to Quakers. Other studies of Quaker religious thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries include: Jonathan Warren, “‘Out of Whose Hive the Quakers Swarm’d’: Polemics and the Justification of Infant Baptism in the Early Restoration,” Perichoresis, 13:1 (June 2015) 97–113; Carol Dale Spencer, “James Nayler and Jacob Boehme’s The Way to Christ,” Quaker Religious Thought, No. 125 (Oct. 2015), 43–56; Jon R. Kershner, “Mysticism and Revelation in John Woolman’s Theology,” Quaker Religious Thought, No. 125 (Oct. 2015), 34–42; and Judith Roads, The Distinctiveness of Quaker Prose, 1650–1699: a Corpus-Based Enquiry (Thesis (Ph.D.), University of Birmingham, 2015). Works on early Quakerism with an American context include: Natalie Spar, “The Politics of the Pure Language in Seventeenth-Century Quakerism: Speech, Silence, and the Founding of Pennsylvania,” Early American Studies 13.3 (Summer 2015), 692–713; Andrew R. Murphy, “The Emergence of William Penn, 1668–1671,” Journal of Church & State, 57:2 (Spring 2015), 333–359; and Heather E. Barry, “Naked Quakers Who Were Not So Naked: Seventeenth-Century Quaker Women in the Massachusetts Bay Colony,” Historical Journal of Massachusetts, 43.2 (Summer 2015) 116–135. Two recent studies examine the meaning of travel among seventeenth and eighteenth century Friends. Hillary Hinds, “Going Nowhere: the Stranger and the Pilgrim in the Journal of George Fox,” Quaker Studies 20:1 (Sept. 2015), 84–102, looks at the place of the journey, the rhetoric of movement and the figure of the stranger in the writings and behavior of early Friends. Jon R. Kershner, “‘A More Lively Feeling’: the Correspondence and Integration of Mystical and [End Page 70] Spatial Dynamics in John Woolman’s Travels,” Quaker Studies 20:1 (Sept. 2015), 103–116, examines the impact of his travels on his social and religious convictions. Tony Seaton, “Travel and Touring in England by Elite Quaker, Industrial Families in The Long Nineteenth Century: the Journeys of Mary-Anne Schimmelpenninck (née Galton) of Birmingham (1778–1856),” Quaker Studies 20:1 (Sept. 2015), 117–144, considers the role of tourism in promoting connections among British Quakers in the nineteenth century. A related work is by Jordan Landes, London Quakers in the Trans-Atlantic World: the Creation of an Early Modern Community (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire [UK]: New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Two studies examine material culture among American Quakers: Michael Lawrence Young, The Style of Quaker Consumption in British Colonial New Jersey: the Link Between Religious Beliefs and Values and the Archaeological Record of the Society of Friends (Thesis (Ph.D.), School of Archaeology and Ancient History, 2015); and Neil Larson, “The Architecture of Quaker Meeting Houses in Dutchess County,” Hudson River Valley Review 31.2 (Spring 2015), 62–87. Quakers and Their Allies in the Abolitionist Cause, 1754–1808, edited with an introduction by Maurice Jackson and Susan Kozel (Abingdon, Oxon. [UK]; New York: Routledge, 2015) contains a wealth of chapters by leading scholars: Gary B. Nash, “Warner Mifflin (1745–98): The Remarkable Life of an Unflinching Abolitionist”; Geoffrey Plank, “Sarah Woolman and the Anti-Slavery Family”; Julie Winch, “Friends, Family and Freedom in Colonial Philadelphia: A Black Slave-Owner Settles Her Accounts”; Maurice Jackson, ‘What Shall Be Done with the Negroes?’: Anthony Benezet’s Legacy: Then and Now”; Richard C. Allen, “Samuel Meredith (1741–1817): American Patriot and Welsh Philanthropist”; Jon R. Kershner, “‘Come Out of Babylon, My People’: John Wool-man’s (1720–72) Anti-Slavery Theology and the Transatlantic Economy”; Julie L...

“Her Humble Estate”: Poverty and Widowhood in Seventeenth-Century New York

New York History Summer / Fall 2015© 2015 by The New York State Historical Association 318 “Her Humble Estate”: Poverty and Widowhood in Seventeenth-Century New York Abby Shelton In 1668, four years after the British assumed control of New Netherland, Aeltie van Breeman faced the first of three court cases designed to collect the debts of her recently deceased husband. First, Theunis Spitsbergen claimed that Van Breeman owed him ninety-seven schepels of wheat for some wooden boards. The widow defended herself by saying that “her husband has perished and that she kn[e]w nothing about the debt.”1 When Gerrit Swart sued for another of Van Breeman’s debts the same day, she claimed that “on account of her poverty she can not pay it.”2 The following year the administrators of Jan Andriesz’s estate prosecuted debts against Van Breeman. But Aeltie could “not give any information about it either.”3 Van Breeman’s testimony in these three cases reveals that she was ill prepared for the vicissitudes of widowhood. The impoverished widow claimed to know nothing of her husband’s business dealings. Perhaps this was due to her own disinterest or incompetence, or perhaps Jan van Breeman was a domineering, patriarchal figure who shared few of his business transactions with his wife. Van Breeman possibly also pled ignorance as part of a legal strategy. But court and public records from colonial New Netherland and New York tell another story. The legal and economic privileges granted women in New Netherland and early New York did not shape the lives of all women in the colony equally. Though much of the historiographical literature on this topic suggests that women under Dutch law possessed legal and material advantages that Anglo-American New Yorkers did not, widowhood could prove an economic, physical, and emotional trial for women of Dutch and Anglo descent alike. 1. “Theunis Spitsbergen, plaintiff, against Aeltie van Breeman, defendant,” A.J.F. van Laer, trans. and ed., Minutes of the Court of Albany, Renesselaerswyck and Schenectady, 1668–1685, 3 vols. (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1932), 1:23 (hereafter cited as MCARS). 2. MCARS, 1:22. 3. MCARS, 1:103. Shelton Poverty and Widowhood in Seventeenth-Century New York 319 Early American women’s historians have only been studying the place of widows in seventeenth-century North American colonies for about forty years.4 Many women’s historians assume that marriage characterized the experience of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women, yet in doing so they ignore widows, who comprised as much as ten percent of the AngloAmerican population. Furthermore, as many as half of all Anglo-American women found themselves widowed at some point in their lives.5 Many of the first historians of Anglo-American women argued that women’s participation in the courts and their control over property declined with the coming of the eighteenth century and the “Anglicization” of colonial law. In particular, Lois Green Carr and Lorena Walsh suggested that women in seventeenth-century Maryland had greater autonomy in marriage and property rights than women in England or other colonies, but then Maryland colonists lost those freedoms in the eighteenth century as native-born populations grew.6 This argument was augmented by Cornelia Hughes Dayton’s study of colonial Connecticut courts. Dayton made the case that as Connecticut shed its Puritan legal heritage and adopted English common law in the late seventeenth century, women were increasingly barred from the courtroom.7 More recent studies have begun to counter the notion that women’s participation in the public square declined in the eighteenth century and instead have focused on how widows created a unique place for themselves in colonial economies and the social order as unmar4 . The two earliest studies of Early American widows are Alexander Keyssar, “Widowhood in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts: A Problem in the History of the Family,” Perspectives in American History (1974): 83–119.and John Faragher, “Old Women and Old Men in Seventeenth-Century Wethersfield, Connecticut,” Women’s Studies 4 (1976): 11– 31. Keyssar and Faragher’s articles were followed by Lois Green Carr and Lorena Walsh, “The Planter’s Wife: The Experience of White Women in...

Religious Transformations in the Early Modern Americas ed. by Stephanie Kirk, and Sarah Rivett

LATIN AMERICAN Religious Transformations in Early Modern Americas. Edited by Stephanie Kirk and Sarah Rivett. [The Early Modern Americas.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2014. Pp. vi, 352. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-8122-4654-4.)The ten contributors to this book edited by Stephanie Kirk and Sarah Rivett achieve their goal of producing cross-disciplinary volume that grasp[s] complexity and variety of [Atlantic] colonial world as it augmented, transformed, and challenged range of Christian beliefs (p. 20). The editors' introduction is followed by chapters in Part I: Comparisons by John H. Elliott, Ralph Bauer, and David A. Boruchoff; Part II: Crossings by David D. Hall and Asuncion Lavrin; Part III: Missions by Matt Cohen, Junia Ferreira Furtado, and Carmen Fernandez-Salvador; and Part IV: Legacies by Teresa A. Toulouse and Sandra M. Gustafson.Elliott's chapter appropriately begins work by differentiating between Indian societies encountered by Spanish and English. He emphasizes imperial projects of these mother countries and concludes that conquerors found it necessary to adapt their ideas and rituals to their new environment . . . [and that] accommodation and selective adaptation were order of day not on one side of religious encounter only, but on both sides (p. 38). Bauer examines Spanish and especially English attitudes about religions of people whom they encountered. If, at beginning of their conquests and colonies, Spaniards were more predisposed than English to view native religions in satanic terms, by late-sixteenth century writers from both countries associate[d] Native American religions not only with paganism but with Satanism (p. 77). Boruchoff focuses on South America to demonstrate early efforts by few priests, mostly Franciscans, to espouse best practices of Christian living in an effort to convince natives to emulate their conduct. He contrasts early example of these good friars by including five wonderful drawings by Felipe Guarnan Poma de Ayala and emphasizing general disrepute and disdain afforded Dominicans, Augustinians, and especially Mercedarians; last became known for their greed, impiety, wantonness, and cruelty (p. 92).Hall's engaging historiographical essay concentrates on New transatlantic politics and analyzes political circumstances and theological and cultural ideas that shaped the Reformed international (sic, p. 111). Lavrin studies unique experience of martyrdom in New Spain. Indigenous peoples in northern frontier proved to be difficult adversaries to crusading priests who viewed conversion of indigenous peoples as part of larger plan of salvation for all humanity (p. 133). Although most missionaries neither expected nor desired martyrdom, some sought glory and a shot at dying for its cause (p. 136).Cohen's historiographical essay examines changing religious forms of Europeans in North America during their first century of residence and calls attention to stumbling blocks to thinking interculturally about religion in early colonial New England (p. …

Cartographers in the Caribbean: Economics and Mapping in the Colonial New World

This paper is the culmination of a semester's worth of research and work conducted at the Burns Library at Boston College as a part of Dr. Sylvia Sellers-Garcia's "Making Hisotry Public" course in the Spring of 2014. This class focused on cartography from the early modern era, and this article focuses on an incredible atlas that was published in 1775 entitled <em>The West India Atlas</em>. The atlas, which is a detailed example of colonial-era cartography, was published by an assistant to a Mr. Thomas Jeffreys, who was the geographer to King George III at the time of his death in 1771. This remarkable text features not only accurate maps and representations of the Caribbean islands, but also vivid descriptions of the various territories and their histories. Both the economic contexts at the time that the atlas was published and how Jeffreys and his assistants chose to represent these contexts within the various maps through symbols and references to navigational resources were examined and analyzed.

The Past Is Never Dead— Measles Epidemic, Boston, Massachusetts, 1713.

The recent measles epidemic in the United States has aroused public disbelief that a disease well-controlled for decades is reemerging to threaten children in the United States. Controversy surrounds measles vaccination in the United States; some parents have even avoided vaccinating their healthy children by exposing them to measles-infected children. However, measles has repeatedly reemerged in the United States during the past 3 centuries or longer (1,2), and its emergence patterns and means of preventing and controlling it are well understood. Until measles is globally eradicated—a goal within reach—it will continue to reappear, sicken, and kill almost anywhere, and we must energetically control each outbreak. When we consider modern measles prevention, it is worth recalling what epidemics were like before vaccines and organized public health systems. One vivid account of measles describes the disease’s deadly spread through a prominent Boston household >300 years ago. In 1713, America’s first important medical figure (3), Puritan minister Cotton Mather (1663–1728), called by one authority “the Dr. Spock of the colonial New England” (4), wrote about a measles epidemic in the American colonies, describing not only its epidemiology and devastation but also the fear it elicited. Mather’s account reminds us of the need for such modern medical and public health tools as vaccination, patient isolation, and prevention policies in saving families from the once-unpreventable diseases that compelled us to develop effective medical advances in the first place. The following account, condensed from Cotton Mather’s personal diary (5), focuses on illnesses in his own household, including those of his wife, 9 children, and a maidservant, over the course of 6 weeks during October–November, 1713.

Entre desiertos y serranías. Población, espacio no controlado y fronteras permeables en el Septentrión novohispano tardocolonial

En este artículo se analiza la circulación de población en la provincia de Nueva Vizcaya a fines de la época colonial, entre los espacios controlados y aquellos que quedaban fuera del control de las autoridades. Aunque se suponía que estaban formalmente integrados en la sociedad colonial como súbditos de la corona, la vida de estos hombres y mujeres transcurría entre su incorporación como habitantes de pueblos y misiones, haciendas o reales de mina, y su dedicación a las diversas actividades productivas como trabajadores agrícolas, mineros o pastores, y su establecimiento por temporadas o su huida definitiva a los desiertos y serranías, donde continuaban su existencia vinculándose con frecuencia a actividades delictivas como el robo de ganado. Estos espacios actuaban, así, como fronteras en el interior de la propia sociedad colonial y contribuían a delimitar y definir identidades sociales y modos de vida.

Native Acts: Indian Performance, 1603-1832 ed. by Joshua David Bellin, Laura L. Mielke, and: Ceremony, Spirituality, and Ritual in Native American Performance: A Creative Notebook by Hanay Geiogamah (review)

Reviewed by: Native Acts: Indian Performance, 1603-1832 ed. by Joshua David Bellin, Laura L. Mielke, and: Ceremony, Spirituality, and Ritual in Native American Performance: A Creative Notebook by Hanay Geiogamah Teresa Stankiewicz Native Acts: Indian Performance, 1603–1832. Edited by Joshua David Bellin and Laura L. Mielke. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. pp. 333. $35.00 paper. Ceremony, Spirituality, and Ritual in Native American Performance: A Creative Notebook. By Hanay Geiogamah. Los Angeles: UCLA American Indian Studies Center, 2011. pp. 144. $16.00 paper. Given the disappointing lack of books published each year on Native American drama, these two new works are prime considerations not only for literary review but also for use in cultural and performance studies. Both of these works speak to the “Indianness” of Native American performance and, perhaps more importantly, are written from a distinctly Native American perspective. Editor Laura L. Mielke’s explication of the terms “Indianness” and “performance” in her introduction to Native Acts, is relevant to both works: “When we refer to Indianness in this volume, we mean the acknowledged attribute of direct association with American Indian peoples and cultures; who identifies American Indian attributes determines the substance of Indianness at specific moments” (5). Mielke defines performance in three ways: to present to an audience, to carry out a command or particular action, and to participate in a formal public function or ritual (2). Native Acts: Indian Performance, 1603–1832 includes ten insightful essays on the performance of being “Indian” that explore said performance from the perspective of the indigenous peoples. Mielke’s introduction is a superlative beginning that not only defines terms and explains the selection of essays but also [End Page 159] raises some pertinent questions about the performance of Indianness for the indigenous peoples of North America. She begins with an example of her own, the legend of Pocahontas, dissecting the various interpretations of the story and calling for an examination of the intent behind those who reported what has now become an American legend that perpetuates a romantic myth of indigenous peoples in North America. The chronologically organized essays first explore the essentialist attitudes of the Europeans who colonized America and the impact of those attitudes on the native people, concluding with the performance of Indianness in the early formation of the United States. As Mielke asserts, “In early North America, Europeans’ conceptions of Indianness were inextricable from the moral, religious, teleological, political, and economic justifications for their [European] presence” (5). The significance of this collection of essays lies in the deliberate intent to recognize the proprietorship of Native Americans, characterized by Mielke as “a critical intervention in the scholarship treating the performance of Indianness” that restores “Indian peoples to the intercultural matrix from which such performances arose” (10). The first four essays, by scholars Matt Cohen, Nan Goodman, John H. Pol-lack, and Olivia Bloechl, expose essentialist interpretations that pervade historical representations of Indians. All four scholars argue that specific essential-ist assumptions led to misrepresentations of the Native American peoples and the subsequent public attitudes that defined native and Euroamerican relationships during the colonial era. Each author also provides a brief historical background of the text or events that are being examined. In “Lying Inventions: Native Dissimulation in Early Colonial New England,” Cohen analyzes Native American acts of strategic simulation and dissimulation as challenges to perceptions of stable national identities. Goodman’s essay, “The Deer Island Indians and Common Law Performance,” examines the European attitudes that deprived Indians of legal status in common law. Bloechl’s essay, “Wendat Song and Carnival Noise in the Jesuit Relations,” reveals the Jesuits’ assessment of Wendat healing ceremonies as superstitious, a grave charge at the time. Pollack’s essay, “Native Performances of Diplomacy and Religion in Early New France,” focuses on the misinterpretation of native ritual of the Innu, Algonquin, and Maliseet as a negotiated treaty, documented by François Gravé Du Pont and Samuel de Champlain in Des Sauvages, ou, Voyage de Samuel Champlain in 1603. The French understood the oration of Anadabijou as a chief or king commanding his people to accept French settlement and military aid. Pollack explains, however, that allied tribes were not interested...

“Who Should You Write For?”: Competing Spheres of Print Culture Production in Colonial Papua and New Guinea

As the colonies of Papua and New Guinea were being prepared for self-government (1973) and independence (1975), three competing spheres of print culture production emerged, each of which developed programs and institutions in parallel and often mutually exclusive ways. These spheres, centred with the colonial administration’s Literature Bureau, the University of Papua New Guinea’s Literature Department, and the Christian missions’ Creative Training Centre, each offered a literary journal as a publication venue for newly trained writers. An analysis of these journals offers a unique glimpse into the publication choices made by young writers at a critical juncture in their personal and professional histories.

Peter Stuyvesant, Premodern Man

Peter Stuyvesant, Premodern Man Susanah Shaw Romney (bio) Donna Merwick. Stuyvesant Bound: An Essay on Loss Across Time. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. xx + 212 pp. Figures, maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $59.95. Donna Merwick’s latest book, Stuyvesant Bound: An Essay on Loss Across Time, takes a fresh look at New Netherland’s last and longest-serving director, Peter Stuyvesant. Merwick’s exploration of this leader of the Dutch outpost on the Hudson reveals her to be a scholar at the peak of her powers. By investigating Stuyvesant’s time in office, his experiences after the fall of the colony, and historical memories of his personality and leadership, she brings to light one of seventeenth-century America’s most important yet poorly understood leaders. Together with her earlier works, Merwick’s study confirms her as one of the foremost historians of New Netherland. Understanding this book’s approach requires noting Merwick’s deepening engagement both with the idea of culture as a factor in human experience and with Dutch culture specifically. In her earlier Possessing Albany, 1630–1710: The Dutch and English Experiences (1990), Merwick uncovered how culture shaped settlers’ interpretations and uses of the upper Hudson River region. She subsequently explored the individual and collective experience of culture in a dynamic and diverse colonial environment. Her Death of a Notary: Conquest and Change in Colonial New York (1999) analyzed the difficulties encountered by one man as his cultural environment shifted. The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland (2006) looked at Dutch-Munsee warfare through the prism of the moral challenges wrought by cultural conflict. Stuyvesant Bound pushes these interests in the relationship between people and culture even deeper, into the heart and mind of her subject, who was the epitome of Dutch colonizers. In this slim volume, Merwick reaches inside Stuyvesant to uncover the integrity of his “interiority” (p. 162). The method employed here is to present the subject’s actions as he understood them. This pushes Merwick to uncover the elements Stuyvesant selected from his culture to order his life and choices as a ruler. This evocative work shows how much a career’s worth of engagement with seventeenth-century Dutch sources has strengthened her appreciation, if not sympathy, for the society she studies. Her reconstruction of the intellectual [End Page 584] and spiritual world from which Stuyvesant made meaning is far beyond what Merwick achieved in her first forays into New Netherland, intriguing as they were, and it marks this book as a serious contribution that must be taken into account by historians of Dutch culture outside North America as well as within it. Merwick’s ability to take on this perspective flows from her eclectic reading, wide-ranging interests, and keen appreciation for the contributions of anthropology. Whereas too many historians are apt to use words like “spirituality” unquestioningly, she engages with such terms. Partly, her ability to recreate Stuyvesant’s interior world relies on the quality of the growing historiography on New Netherland. Not only does she generously acknowledge and enter into dialogue with this literature, she should fairly be recognized as having helped to create it by showing in her prior works what it is possible to do with Dutch sources, drawing in a wider readership among colonial historians, and painting a new and complex picture of the colony. This book continues the experiments with narrative form begun with Death of a Notary and The Shame and the Sorrow. Borrowing from the genre of “eighteenth- and nineteenth-century learned essays” (front flap), this book has a brevity that keeps her argument on track and that readers accustomed to standard scholarly monographs will find a welcome change. As such, the book does not provide a comprehensive telling of Stuyvesant’s administration from 1647 to 1664, although careful readers will encounter most of the major turning points along the way. Considerable general knowledge of the colony’s history is assumed. Nor is this book a biography; there is no account here of Stuyvesant’s birth, marriage, or death. Readers will have to wait for Jaap Jacobs’ ongoing project to come to fruition to learn the full story of Stuyvesant...

Book review: Sisters Crossing Boundaries: German Missionary Nuns in Colonial Togo and New Guinea, 1897–1960, written by Katharina Stornig

Book review: Sisters Crossing Boundaries: German Missionary Nuns in Colonial Togo and New Guinea, 1897–1960, written by Katharina Stornig

The Cohasset Marshlands Dispute: International Arbitration in Colonial New England

One of the earliest international arbitrations in the Americas arose from rival claims to hayfields contested between two groups of religious dissidents. The dispute resolution process which unfolded in 1640 between the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies takes special significance as an epochal step toward the robust cross-border cooperation that ultimately united thirteen disparate colonies into a single nation.

Generations and Regeneration: “Sexceptionalism” and Group Identity among Puritans in Colonial New England

A s P u r i t A n c o l o n i s t s v e n t u r e d to North america, they experienced a set of obligations deeply connected to their identity as English subjects. To the Crown they pledged the settlement of a new continent that would further promote the monarchy’s growing empire. To God they vowed to be models of “Christian charitie” as they cared for each other in a harsh new environment. and for their own fulfillment they promised commitment to pure Christianity, extending the dissent that had led them to pursue distance from England as well as its church. While colonial New