Until relatively recently, the connection between British imperial history and the history of early America was taken for granted. In recent times, however, early American historiography has begun to suffer from a loss of coherent definition as competing manifestos demand various reorderings of the subject in order to combine time periods and geographical areas in ways that would have previously seemed anomalous. It has also become common place to announce that the history of America is best accounted for in America itself in a three-way melee between "settlers", the indigenous populations, and the forcibly transported African slaves and their creole descendants. The contributions to British North America in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries acknowledge the value of the historiographic work done under this new dispensation in the last two decades and incorporate its insights. However, the volume advocates a pluralistic approach to the subject generally, and attempts to demonstrate that the metropolitan power was of more than secondary importance to America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The central theme of this volume is the question "to what extent did it make a difference to those living in the colonies that made up British North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that they were part of an empire and that the empire in question was British?" The contributors, some of the leading scholars in their respective fields, strive to answer this question in various social, political, religious, and historical contexts.

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.

In examining the history of northeastern North America in the seventeenth and eighteen centuries, it is important to take into account diverse influences and experiences. Not only was the relationship between native inhabitants and colonial settlers a defining characteristic of Acadia/Nova Scotia and New England in this era, but it was also a relationship shaped by wider continental and oceanic connections. The essays in this volume deal with topics such as colonial habitation, imperial exchange, and aboriginal engagement, all of which were pervasive phenomena of the time. John G. Reid argues that these were complicated processes that interacted freely with one another, shaping the human experience at different times and places. Northeastern North America was an arena of distinctive complexities in the early modern period, and this collection uses it as an example of a manageable and logical basis for historical study. Reid also explores the significance of anniversary observances and commemorations that have served as vehicles of reflection on the lasting implications of historical developments in the early modern period. These and other insights amount to a fresh perspective on the region and offer a deeper understanding of North American history.

The essays in this volume deal with topics such as colonial habitation, imperial exchange, and aboriginal engagement, all of which were pervasive phenomena of the time.

By the American Revolution, the farmers and city-dwellers of British America had achieved, individually and collectively, considerable prosperity. The nature and extent of that success are still unfolding. In this first comprehensive assessment of where research on prerevolutionary economy stands, what it seeks to achieve, and how it might best proceed, the authors discuss those areas in which traditional work remains to be done and address new possibilities for a 'new economic history.'

In detail Bailyn here presents the struggle of the merchants to achieve full social recognition as their successes in trade and in such industries as fishing and lumbering offered them avenues to power. Surveying the rise of merchant families, he offers a look in depth of the emergence of a new social group whose interests and changing social position powerfully affected the developing character of American society.