The colonial experience of Americans was not one long march toward independence. Sixteen hundred seventy-six was a cataclysmic year of Indian insurrection and civil war in America, when the colonies lost their "autonomy" after King Philip's War and Bacon's Rebellion. Stephen Webb makes clear how the forces unleashed in 1676 revolutionized the relationships between the adolescent colonies, the imperial government in London, and the embattled Algonquin and Iroquois Indians, and shows how the political institutions that evolved in the colonies in the next three hundred years reflected this experience.

In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a well-known colonial uprising against the authority of King Charles II, in the person of Virginia's governor Sir William Berkeley. Bacon's Rebellion dramatically altered relations between Chesapeake colonists and Native Americans, and also induced late Stuart imperialists to crack down on colonial autonomy. Michael Leroy Oberg has transcribed, edited, and introduced the official record left by Samuel Wiseman, King Charles II's scribe assigned to this uprising's investigation_making this history widely available for the first time in book form.

This volume resumes the story of Governor William Berkeley upon his return from England in 1659, then moves the reader quickly to that quintessential political embroglio of 17th-century America--Bacon's Rebellion of 1676. Convinced about the Governor's lack of concern for their safety and economic well being, a group of rebellious frontier planters cast their lot with Berkeley's cousin and former ally on the Governor's Council, Nathaniel Bacon. Bacon soon found himself at the head of a force of 2,000 men that routed the Pamunkeys and ultimately took possession of all of Virginia west of the Chesapeake Bay. Although Berkeley would emerge victorious, executing a number of Bacon's lieutenants, he was himself recalled to England five months later, scarcely three months before his own demise. An extraordinary episode in colonial history, Bacon's Rebellion may have been an earlier century's harbinger of the limits to which America's colonists would permit themselves to be ruled by a tyrant.

This is the first book to place Russia's 'long' eighteenth century squarely in its European context. The conceptual framework is set out in an opening critique of modernisation which, while rejecting its linear implications, maintains its focus on the relationship between government, economy and society. Following a chronological introduction, a series of thematic chapters (covering topics such as finance and taxation, society, government and politics, culture, ideology, and economy) emphasise the ways in which Russia's international ambitions as an emerging great power provoked administrative and fiscal reforms with wide-ranging (and often unanticipated) social consequences. This thematic analysis allows Simon Dixon to demonstrate that the more the tsars tried to modernise their state, the more backward their empire became. A chronology and critical bibliography are also provided to allow students to discover more about this colourful period of Russian history.

Includes some separate vols. for special sessions.

Sometimes described as "America's deadliest war," King Philip's War proved a critical turning point in the history of New England, leaving English colonists decisively in command of the region at the expense of native peoples. Although traditionally understood as an inevitable clash of cultures or as a classic example of conflict on the frontier between Indians and whites, in the view of James D. Drake it was neither. Instead, he argues, King Philip's War was a civil war, whose divisions cut across ethnic lines and tore apart a society composed of English colonizers and Native Americans alike. According to Drake, the interdependence that developed between English and Indian in the years leading up to the war helps explain its notorious brutality. Believing they were dealing with an internal rebellion and therefore with an act of treason, the colonists and their native allies often meted out harsh punishments. The end result was nothing less than the decimation of New England's indigenous peoples and the consequent social, political, and cultural reorganization of the region. In short, by waging war among themselves, the English and Indians of New England destroyed the world they had constructed together. In its place a new society emerged, one in which native peoples were marginalized and the culture of the New England Way receded into the past.