Colonial government, Pilgrims, the New England town, Native land, the background of religious toleration, and the changing memory recalling the Pilgrims – all are examined and stereotypical assumptions overturned in 15 essays by the foremost authority on the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony. Thorough research revises the story of colonists and of the people they displaced. Bangs’ book is required reading for the history of New England, Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts Natives, the Mennonite contribution to religious toleration in Europe and New England, and the history of commemoration, from paintings and pageants to living history and internet memes. If Pilgrims were radical, so is this book.

Excerpt from The Old Colony, Or, Pilgrim Land: Past and Present In the early days of American history, all the population of what afterwards became the United States lived near the Atlantic coasts; and for many years after the formation of the confederacy of commonwealths the inhabitants had penetrated but comparatively a short distance inland, so that the ocean, with its indenting bays and sounds, and the rivers emptying into it along every part of the coast, furnished always attractive facilities for transportation and habitation purposes, while water-fronts were easy of access in summer, even for that portion of the population most remote from the shores, and the delights of the element were available for a people seemingly almost amphibious by nature, by history and practice, belonging nearly as much to the water as to the land, and which had little idea of recreative or diverting exercises that were not conducted near the seashore. Although the people of the United States are at present scattered far and wide over countless square miles of country, until they have occupied nearly every portion of a territory lying between two great oceans 3,000 miles apart from east to west, and with an expanse from north to south nearly as great, they have never yet lost, have scarcely modified, in fact, the distinguishing traits of their early history, at least with reference to their love of ocean and water scenery and situations. "Watering-places," localities by lake or river or seashore, are as much a necessity north, east, south and west, in this country, as are township organizations or cemeteries. Nor have the descendants of the fathers rooted out or discouraged the ancient love for ocean haunts and seashore resorts which first prevailed; and to this day pilgrimages to the ocean front are made from every inland section during the warm months, the devotees travelling thousands of miles, and numbering hundreds of thousands of souls yearly, in gratification of this inherent desire. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

An ambitious new history of the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony, published for the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s landing In 1620, separatists from the Church of England set sail across the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower. Understanding themselves as spiritual pilgrims, they left to preserve their liberty to worship God in accordance with their understanding of the Bible. There exists, however, an alternative, more dispiriting version of their story. In it, the Pilgrims are religious zealots who persecuted dissenters and decimated the Native peoples through warfare and by stealing their land. The Pilgrims’ definition of liberty was, in practice, very narrow. Drawing on original research using underutilized sources, John G. Turner moves beyond these familiar narratives in his sweeping and authoritative new history of Plymouth Colony. Instead of depicting the Pilgrims as otherworldly saints or extraordinary sinners, he tells how a variety of English settlers and Native peoples engaged in a contest for the meaning of American liberty.