Seventeenth-Century New Research Articles

Providence and Puritan Deceit: John Davenport's Forgery Revisited

Many scholars have told the story of how John Davenport (bap. 1597, d. 1670), a prominent Congregationalist minister in New England, was fatally discredited as a fraudster when a letter he had forged was exposed in 1669. However, no one has analyzed how this extraordinary scandal fits into the larger narrative of puritan providentialism and its disenchantment. Focusing on the manipulation of providential language, this article shows that intra-Congregationalist conflicts over church polity could often be more political than theological. God-talk, or ‘providential pragmatism’, empowered New Englanders to navigate the ecclesiological ambiguities inherent in the Congregational system in a way that most benefited themselves. Davenport's scandal, precisely because it was the most blatant form of such pragmatism, offers a case study of a pattern of self-contradiction and double standard already observable in similar cases of schisms over church membership and infant baptism in late seventeenth-century New England.

“The Boy of Tocutt” and the Demonic Covenant in Seventeenth-Century New England Demonology

ABSTRACT The New England demonic possession narrative, “A Confession of a Boy at Tocutt,” remains conspicuously absent from the rich scholarship on diabolic affliction in seventeenth-century North America. Appearing in Cotton Mather’s 1689Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions, this narrative details the torments of one settler, known only as “The Boy of Tocutt,” in Branford Connecticut (ca. 1645–1666). While incomplete, this account is marked by a unique emphasis on the demonic pact and offers a valuable insight into the development of this demonological concept in New England. Through a close reading of “A Confession of a Boy at Tocutt” in the context of Protestant demonic covenant theology, this article establishes the demonological and narrative function of the pact in New England diabolical literature. In doing so, it reconciles this possession narrative with succeeding cases and establishes the versality of the demonic pact in New England demonology.

PXRF Analysis of Obsidian Artifacts from a Rural Spanish Household: Investigating Spanish-Pueblo Interactions in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico

pXRF analysis is used to identify the geographic origins of obsidian artifacts from a seventeenth-century New Mexico Spanish homestead. Socio-economic factors that may have influenced the presence of obsidian sources found at the site are then examined. The analysis provides a needed starting point to begin addressing questions concerning the incidence of obsidian and other flaked lithics recovered at early Spanish sites in the region and demonstrates the potential of obsidian to investigate broader historical archaeological and anthropological issues. I conclude that interpretations concerning the presence of lithic artifacts at Spanish sites need to move beyond functional explanations (e.g. lack of metal or material properties) and, instead, incorporate analysis with documentary evidence (when available) and larger social and economic contexts.

“A Bad Race of Infected Blood” The Atlantic Profile of Gaspar Riveros Vasconcelos and the Question of Race in 1650 New Spain

Abstract Based on manuscripts from the Mexican National Archive recording a 1650 Inquisition trial for astrology, this article will present a reconstruction of the story of Gaspar Riveros Vasconcelos, a “mulatto” born in Tangier, a descendant of a Portuguese father and Angolan mother. He travelled the Atlantic commercial routes – visiting Angola, Pernambuco, Cartagena de Indias, La Havana – and got involved in political discussions with Spaniards residing in mid-seventeenth century Mexico City. This period was particularly tough for Portuguese people in Spanish America, given the 1640 breach of the dynastic union of Spain and Portugal, which had been formerly achieved in 1581 by King Philipp ii. Vasconcelos’ story allows us to reflect on identity formation in time, on the concept of race, as well as on the ways in which “a persona miserable de color pardo” could deploy his agency as Afro-Portuguese in colonial Mexico society. As such, this paper aims to reconsider the relevance of individual narratives which can generate a growing awareness of the importance that Afro-descendants had in the Ibero-American world and how they could influence the process of racialization in the local context of seventeenth century New Spain.

Puritans on Trial

Puritans on Trial Jenny Hale Pulsipher (bio) Peter Mancall, The Trials of Thomas Morton: An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. 288 pp. 19 b/w illustrations, notes, and index. $30.00. Abram Van Engen, City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. 392 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $30.00. The United States' political and cultural divisions in the spring of 2020 are stark, and this division has been aggravated by the politicization of a global pandemic. In the past, crises like 9/11 drew the country together, creating unity through a shared response. This is not one of those times. It is a good time, however, for two books that offer a centuries-long overview of another cultural and political divide. Peter Mancall's The Trials of Thomas Morton: An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England and Abram Van Engen's City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism address the historical and historiographical battle between the Puritans of New England and their foes. Thus, these books cover the historical figures of John Winthrop and Thomas Morton and their respective political, religious, and cultural contexts as well as the popular, academic, and political figures who used Winthrop, Morton, and their writings to characterize the nation's founding. Both books are engagingly written, insightfully argued, and offer fascinating, sometimes rollicking, tours through the ways Puritans have been characterized—and caricatured—over time. Caricature is a key word here: Most of those who harnessed Winthrop's and Morton's lives and writings unabashedly trimmed and tucked those stories to support their chosen narratives of progress or declension. Mancall and Van Engen provide close-up views of this cultural battleground and, in the process, offer rich historical and historiographical detail and considerable food for thought. Peter Mancall's book concerns Thomas Morton, an English lawyer and colonial promoter who ran afoul of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonists in early seventeenth-century New England. Morton is probably best known as the "lord of misrule" who raised a maypole in his settlement near [End Page 367] Plymouth and led drunken revels involving his own men and local American Indians. These antics (among other things) led Plymouth authorities to arrest him and ship him back to England, a heavy-handed response that has fueled sympathy for Morton and antipathy for his opponents ever since. Morton was also the author of New English Canaan, a book he penned to support the colonization project of Ferdinando Gorges and to skewer the Puritans who stood in the way. Throughout New English Canaan, Morton conflated the Plymouth and Massachusetts groups. Morton called both of them "cruell schismaticks" and considered them equally hostile to the English state church (Morton, p. 13).1 Mancall, on the other hand, distinguishes the two groups, explaining that while both were part of the puritan movement, the Plymouth "Pilgrims" were separatists and the Massachusetts Puritans were reformers. Throughout his book, Morton aimed barbs at Puritans in general and in particular, gleefully dubbing height-challenged Myles Standish "Captaine Shrimp" (p. 147). Morton was clearly having a great deal of fun, but Mancall reminds us that he was also engaged in deadly serious political theater aimed at undermining the legal standing of the Puritan settlements. Mancall's book begins and ends with historiography, tracing how Morton and his book played out in American history, always as a foil to the Puritans. Mancall explains that the Puritans fared better than their foes in American cultural memory through the start of the nineteenth century. When Morton was remembered at all, it was as "a miscreant who needed to be brushed aside for the colonies to succeed" (pp. 14–15). Morton's New English Canaan, first published in 1637, was extremely rare, but one copy was handed down in the Adams family, and they were instrumental in its early-nineteenth-century emergence from obscurity. An abridged edition of Morton's account, possibly edited by John Quincy Adams, appeared in the 1810 Monthly Anthology and Boston Review. In its preface, the editor decried...

Deliberative Democracy in the Context of Town Meetings in Seventeenth-Century New England

From Alexis de Tocqueville onward, the seventeenth-century New England town has been associated with political and social practices that nurtured the making of a “democratic” society. Myth or reality? And where does the religion of the English people who founded the New England colonies figure in this story? A close examination of town and church records—which Tocqueville was unable to accomplish—reveals a powerful commitment to the core values of transparency, equity (fairness and justice), and broad participation. The “Congregational” system of church government transferred authority from any centralized hierarchy to the laymen of each local congregation. Similarly, the central governments in the colonies gave generous allocations of land to groups of immigrants, empowering them to set up self-governing towns. A crucial question for these towns was deciding how to distribute this land; another, was who could share in the decision-making. No formal or explicit “democratic” ideology accompanied the making of this civic culture, but in the context of the seventeenth century, the outcome was something unusually akin to a democratic society

7 The Exemplary Power of Antiquity: Humanist Rhetoric and Ceremony in Seventeenth‐Century New Spain

Bulletin of Latin American ResearchVolume 37, Issue S1 p. 104-118 Chapter 7 The Exemplary Power of Antiquity: Humanist Rhetoric and Ceremony in Seventeenth-Century New Spain Stuart M. McManus, Stuart M. McManusSearch for more papers by this author Stuart M. McManus, Stuart M. McManusSearch for more papers by this author First published: 26 November 2018 https://doi.org/10.1111/blar.12793Citations: 1Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume37, IssueS1Supplement: Antiquities and Classical Traditions in Latin AmericaNovember 2018Pages 104-118 RelatedInformation

Maize avoidance? Colonial French attitudes towards Native American foods in the Pays des Illinois (17th–18th century)

ABSTRACTFrench colonists in seventeenth century New France were introduced to maize, the staple of the Native American diet. In the eighteenth century, when French agriculturalists settled along the Mississippi River, they grew maize but preferred not to eat it themselves, as fur traders and soldiers had previously done. Maize avoidance reflected the changing socio-economic framework of French settlement. Fur traders were concerned with integrating themselves into Native American kin networks, while farmers elaborated distinctions between “French” and “Indian” in the domains of housing, clothing, and food, symbolized by the opposition of wheat bread to maize mush, while readily adopting other native foods – game, pumpkins, maple sugar, even bear oil. Maize was shipped down the Mississippi to Louisiana, but also used to feed the sizeable slave population as well as landless French laborers. Food choices reflected race and class differences, rather than set cultural preferences.

The Reality of Empire: New Englanders on the Ground in Seventeenth Century East Jersey

The overall question of this article is what it meant for those living in seventeenth century New Jersey to be part of the English Empire. Did it matter at the local level? How did imperial changes (between Dutch and English, various proprietors) impact the settlers? What happens to our understanding of this time and place if we look at it from the perspective of the people on the ground, using surviving local town meeting records as the source? To find answers the paper asks two related questions: who were the settlers and where did they come from? And also what attracted them – was it land or religious freedom, or perhaps a combination of both?

‘Las ciencias curiosas’: Curiosity, Studiousness and the New Philosophy in the Carta de Sor Filotea de la Cruz and the Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz

This article analyses the presence of the discourse of curiosity in Manuel Fernandez de Santa Cruz’s Carta de Sor Filotea (1690) and Sor Juana’s Respuesta a Sor Filotea (1691), an aspect of the texts that scholars have overlooked until now. It discusses the conflicting meanings each writer ascribes to ‘curiosidad’ and ‘curioso’, and how these engage with the changing understanding of the terms in the late seventeenth century. In doing so, it builds on Neil Kenny’s research into early modern curiosity and, in particular, on the connection he identifies between curiosity and the nascent scientific method in the seventeenth century. This article argues that in addition to being one of the earliest texts in defence of women’s learning in the Americas, the Carta and the Respuesta also present evidence for both the circulation of and the resistance to empirical ideas in late seventeenth-century New Spain.

To Secure her Freedom: “Dorcas ye blackmore,” Race, Redemption, and the Dorchester First Church

This essay considers the intersection of race and religion in seventeenth-century puritan New England by reconstructing the life of a young enslaved African woman identified in church records as “Dorcas ye blackmore” and by examining the efforts of the brethren of the Dorchester First Church to secure her legal freedom.

Wychowanie religijne w purytańskich rodzinach Nowej Anglii

Przedmiotem zainteresowania w artykule jest stosunek siedemnastowiecznych kolonistów purytańskich w Ameryce Północnej do kwestii rodziny, jej pochodzenia, struktury i funkcji pełnionych w szerszym kontekście religijnym i społecznym. Na przykładzie dzieł ówczesnych autorów ukazana została w szczególności jej rola związana z wychowaniem religijnym i edukacją dzieci oraz relacjami między członkami rodziny.

Jeremiah’s Scribes: Creating Sermon Literature in Puritan New EnglandEmpowering Words: Outsiders and Authorship in Early AmericaWriting the Rebellion: Loyalists and the Literature of Politics in British America

Jeremiah’s Scribes: Creating Sermon Literature in Puritan New EnglandEmpowering Words: Outsiders and Authorship in Early AmericaWriting the Rebellion: Loyalists and the Literature of Politics in British America

“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...

Editors’ Introduction

New York History Summer / Fall 2015© 2015 by The New York State Historical Association 261 Editors’ Introduction D.L. Noorlander, Thomas Beal, Susan Goodier New York History has been an important forum for reflective essays and original research on New Netherland and Dutch New York for many years. The New Netherland Institute currently lists in its online bibliography at least twenty-six articles that this journal published between the 1970s and today.1 Among them we find, for example, David Steven Cohen’s influential essay on the colony’s ethnic makeup, “How Dutch were the Dutch of New Netherland?” (1981), and Joyce Goodfriend’s excellent historiographic essay, “Writing/Righting Dutch Colonial History” (1999).2 More recently, New York History commemorated the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s 1609 voyage with a special issue dedicated to Dutch topics. And in 2014 the Editors organized a panel of seven experts from across the United States and Canada for our first-ever roundtable discussion on the current state of New Netherland studies.3 In this issue we continue our long-time commitment to Dutch American scholarship with twice the usual content: seven essays, plus book reviews, an exhibit review, and a glossary of potentially-confusing Dutch terms. The issue opens with an essay by Jeroen van den Hurk, who writes about early Dutch activities on Manhattan Island in “Plan Versus Execution: The ‘Ideal City’ of New Amsterdam.” Van den Hurk examines the history of European town planning and how the Dutch West India Company drew on various influences from the Italian, Dutch, 1. The NNI bibliography is not comprehensive. It is missing, for example, Irmgard Carras, “Who Cared? The Poor in 17th-Century New Amsterdam, 1628–1664,” New York History 85, no. 3 (Summer 2004), 247–263, and Noah Gelfand, “A Transatlantic Approach to Understanding the Formation of a Jewish Community in New Netherland and New York,” New York History 89, no. 4 (Fall 2008), 375–395. A thorough comparison would probably turn up more missing titles. See http://www.newnetherlandinstitute .org/research/new-netherland-bibliography/ (accessed February 18, 2016). 2. David Steven Cohen, “How Dutch Were the Dutch of New Netherland?” New York History 62, no. 1 (Jan. 1981): 49–60; Joyce Goodfriend, “Writing/Righting Dutch Colonial History,” New York History 80, no. 1 (Jan. 1999): 5–28. 3. The special Dutch issue was vol. 89, no. 4 (Fall 2008). See also “Roundtable: The Past, Present, and Future of New Netherland Studies,” New York History 95, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 446–490. 262 ■ NEW YORK HISTORY and Spanish worlds to design a colonial capital that did not, in the end, resemble the original schemes and proposals. The next three essays describe religious and social developments somewhat later in the colony’s history. In “‘Hot Pestilential and Unheard-Of Fevers, Illnesses, and Torments’: Days of Fasting and Prayer in New Netherland,” Jaap Jacobs uses Peter Stuyvesant’s proclamations about fast and prayer days to explore the events and developments that colonists believed to be especially important. Jacobs also argues that fast and prayer days were not strictly Calvinist in nature. Rather, they built on a widespread belief in divine providence and fostered a kind of non-denominational, civic religion. Harm Zwarts writes about religion and the economy in “Reformed Deaconries as Providers of Credit in Dutch Settlements.” The deaconries did not have access to the same investment opportunities as their counterparts in Europe, Zwarts shows, but by lending money to colonists they created their own markets and grew their funds gradually through the receipt of interest payments. In Zwarts’s account, the deaconry serves to illustrate, on the one hand, the successful recreation of Dutch institutions in America, and on the other, the need for flexibility and adaptation in a colonial setting . Deacons sometimes used their funds on behalf of poor widows, who are also the main topic of the next essay, “‘Her Humble Estate’: Poverty and Widowhood in Seventeenth-Century New York,” by Abby Shelton. Shelton uses colonial court records to study the experiences of three different women, all widows, who did not have the resources and family networks to support themselves after the death of a husband. Despite some legal and...

Black Legacies: Race and the European Middle Ages by Lynn T. Ramey (review)

Ramey, Lynn T. 2014. Black Legacies: Race and European Middle Gainesville: University Press of Florida. $69.95 hc. 192 pp.The question of whether scholars can profitably study in Middle Ages has become increasingly pressing in recent years. Race and studies have not traditionally mixed, and Geraldine Heng has written that studies suffers from a blind spot . . . a cognitive lag that makes theory unable step back any further than Renaissance (2011, 262). Heng and other scholars, such as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, have argued that medieval texts reflect and participate in creation of human hierarchies with lived effects (Cohen 2013, 111). Thomas Hahn has claimed that examining descriptors of identities affirm(s) cross-cultural usefulness and stability of notion of (2001, 26). In my forthcoming (March 2015) special issue of Postmedieval, I point out that, while to be black is, in European Middle Ages, be other . . . be black is also be other European Middle Ages. The notion of a homogenously white space has for far too long dominated popular and scholarly notions of European Middle In Black Legacies, Lynn T. Ramey adds her voice cadre of scholars who have registered importance of studying when she succinctly states, It is not necessary have word 'race' have concept of race (26). The answer that Black Legacies gives question of race's relevance Middle Ages is resoundingly affirmative.In fact, Black Legacies registers magnitude of race's impact on Middle Ages by painting with broad brushstrokes. The approach is fitting; boasts a vast body of evidence that points large-scale cultural effects. After dealing in her first two chapters with foundational entanglement of in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century origins of studies and rehearsing major points of inquiry into (convivencia in Spain, unstable meanings of blackness, rationalist philosophical investigations as what constitutes humanity), Ramey moves on in chapter 3 role of Christian biblical tradition in development of racial ideology. The chapter, titled Biblical Race?, achieves its goal not so much through comprehensiveness-the topic could easily take up a book longer than Black Legacies; Willie James Jennings's The Christian Imagination (2010) and J. Kameron Carter's Race: Theological Account (2008) come mind-as through nuanced treatments of several exemplary narratives and figures. The chapter effectively asserts that a racializing spirit is shared among tradition of Moses's Cushite wife, genealogical and geographical division of world according Noah's three sons, story of Queen of Sheba and her encounter with Solomon, and figure of black bride in Song of Songs. Ramey's fourth chapter explores understanding of heredity, focusing on implications and results of reproductive pairs mismatched by religion, culture, and phenotype. Ramey rightly notes that this study requires turning late popular literature. While Bible, Greek and Roman philosophies, and medical writings rarely address miscegenation, the vernacular literature of twelfth and thirteenth centuries seems particularly preoccupied with intermarriage (68). Black Legacies paints its picture of vividly and dynamically with late popular literature as its brush.Fluid interplay between past, present, and future is an important thread in Black Legacies. The book's fifth chapter lays out in some detail how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century New World exploration relied on racializing paradigms developed in Middle Ages: notion of monstrous and late debates about whether these races could be categorized as human. Ramey claims that early modern culture developed a hierarchy of humanness that transcends conclusions that a group was either human or not. …

The Sodomy Trial of Nicholas Sension, 1677: Documents and Teaching Guide

The sodomy trial of Nicholas Sension in 1677 has long fascinated historians, in part because the surviving documentation from this particular case is exceptionally full and richly detailed, but also because it challenges long-held assumptions about attitudes toward sodomy in early America. The trial records cast light not only on the history of sexuality but also on a broad range of themes relating to seventeenth-century New England’s society and culture. Yet until now no complete edition of the documents from Sension’s trial has appeared in print. This edition is intended primarily for use in undergraduate courses. It includes a substantial introduction that discusses attitudes toward illicit sex in early New England, the challenges involved in the legal prosecution of sodomy, what little we know about Nicholas Sension’s biographical details, and the specific circumstances surrounding his prosecution; it also considers the knotty issues of sexual assault and of consent that weave through many of the depositions. A brief time line and questions to guide classroom discussion are also included. The documents themselves have been modernized in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation as an aid to comprehension. For interested scholars, literal transcriptions are printed separately in this issue under “Consider the Source.”

The Many Puritans of Early New England

Every once in a while it is refreshing to see a series of biographies of the Puritans extend its scope beyond the usual Mather/Winthrop/Sewall trinity. Francis J. Bremer has written a series of brief biographies on some of New England's earliest leading lights as well as a longer treatment of the life of New Haven founder John Davenport. While few, if any, of the subjects of these books will be wholly unfamiliar to students of Puritan New England, some are more familiar then others. John Winthrop, whose biography begins First Founders, is, of course, one of the most familiar names from early New England, although Anne Hutchinson and Anne Bradstreet may give him a run for his money among today's college students. Others whose biographies are included here, such as Lady Deborah Moody and Samuel Winthrop, while certainly not obscure, are likely to be less familiar to those who concentrate on areas other than early seventeenth-century New England. Given that Bremer notes in the introduction to First Founders that too often the story of New England is told as if the region were simply Massachusetts (or even Boston) writ large, his decision to focus almost entirely on individuals whose colonial experience was primarily in Massachusetts is strange (p. 2). John Davenport's and Anne Eaton's biographies bring us to New Haven, but Connecticut, Plymouth, and Rhode Island appear only as passing mentions in stories that have their foundation in Massachusetts. Both First Founders and Building a New Jerusalem are very readable works free of jargon and unnecessarily complicated prose. Both invite the reader to imagine the early Puritans as actors on a less parochial stage than nonspecial- ists usually envision. Bremer treats John Winthrop's life in England with as much seriousness as his more well known time in Massachusetts. John's son

The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States by Mark Fiege

 Reviews The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States by Mark Fiege University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2012. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 600 pages. $34.95 cloth. In his opening chapter, Mark Fiege reveals why he wrote The Republic of Nature, which in turn reveals much about the content and character of thisremarkablebook.Someyearsback,while teaching American environmental history, two students asked him why the course did not cover more traditional topics in American history. Their query grabbed his imagination and held it. Indeed, many common topics in environmental history are absent or slighted in U.S. history surveys, while many traditional topics found in survey textbooks are absent or slighted in the study of environmental history. Fiegeembracedthestudents’challenge,selected nine common episodes in U.S. history surveys but uncommon in environmental history narratives ,andexplainedwhyandhownaturematteredineachepisode .Thatsimplebutingenious strategy sheds new light on familiar events.The same strategy worked well for Charles Beard in 1913 when he provided a class-based analysis of the founding of the new republic, and for Joan Scott in 1986 when she explained why gender was a useful category of analysis. Fiege seeks a similarlastingshiftwhereinhistoriansacknowledge the physical world as an inseparable and essential component shaping every important event in U.S. history. Contrary to what is implied in the subtitle, the book is not a comprehensive“environmental history of the United States.” Rather, it is a collection of artfully crafted profiles of iconic events: the witchcraft hysteria in seventeenthcentury New England, the Declaration of Independence, the antebellum rise of cotton agriculture and slavery in the South,the life and times of Abraham Lincoln,the CivilWar,building the first transcontinental railroad,building the atomic bomb,Jim Crow and Brown v.Board of Education, and the OPEC-spawned energy crisis of the 1970s. Each chapter explores the common theme: How did nature matter? The answers are richly complex, illuminating, and at times surprising. By “nature,” Fiege means the whole biophysical world: natural resources such as timber, soil, and water, of course, but also geography, climate, microorganisms, the built environment, domesticated plants and animals, and the human body — muscles (labor), alimentation, fatigue, fear, dreams, and desires. Nature in Fiege’s study includes both the material and the cultural. For the latter, he examines how conceptions of nature influenced keyAmerican religious and political ideologies, especially in the colonial era and early republic. Chapter 2 on the Enlightenment andAmerican Independence is especially strong on that topic. Readers will be surprised and delighted by how much Fiege accomplishes in each case study. Every chapter is deeply contextualized in time and place. Each provides decades of historical context leading up to the particular event being profiled and describes changing social, political, and economic conditions. Sometimes Fiege leaves nature out of the picture entirely while he elaborates on gender, class,race,religion,and politics.But the context is always useful, never excessive or redundant, a masterful and balanced blend of traditional history and environmental history. If not for a number of large chronological gaps in historical coverage, the book could suffice as an environmental history of the United States, despite its episodic structure. The most significant gap is between 1869 (where Chapter reviews  OHQ vol. 114, no. 1 6 ends) and World War II (where Chapter 7 begins). In contrast, Fiege has four chapters covering the early to mid 1800s. I expect most readers will be inclined to forgive his omission. At nearly 600 pages, it seems unreasonable to expect additional chapters. Moreover, I would not want to see any of the existing chapters reduced substantially or excised. Ideally, I would love to see Fiege in the future make this a two-volume work that corresponds with the classic two-volume U.S. history survey. A few new chapters on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would be sufficient.I would certainly assign it when teaching U.S. history survey classes, and I think many others also would profit by doing so. Gratefully,Fiege wrote for a broad audience. He is among that rare breed who can spin a tale that is accessible and satisfying to both undergraduates and academic specialists.More than that,The Republic of Nature not only...

Antinomian Controversy in the Seventeenth-Century New England and the First Great Awakening---Focused on Jonathan Edwards' Doctrine of Justification

Antinomian Controversy in the Seventeenth-Century New England and the First Great Awakening---Focused on Jonathan Edwards' Doctrine of Justification