[.ca] Penguin History Of The United States 01 American Colonies (ISBN 0142002100)

very readable:
Good synthesis of the colonization of America, including the SW & Pacific NW. Excellent prose. My only complaint is the very abrupt ending, with no conclusion.

very good:
This book is excellent; the only book on colonial history you will ever need (although after reading it, you may be inspired to dig deeper). I wish more historians could write like Talyor. Only one small complaint -- I wish there had been more detailed maps.

Multi-faceted colonial history:
Many American history books fall into one or more of three traps: Beginning American history with Columbus in 1492, acting as if the United States was destined for independence from the beginning and limiting colonial history to English influences on the Eastern Seaboard. This book does not fall into any of these traps. Author Alan Taylor specifically set out to avoid them. The book begins with the first Americans' migration from Siberia into Alaska and ends with U.S. control of the Hawaiian Islands in 1898. Taylor also includes the Caribbean islands in his colonial history. As he points out, for much of the period before U.S. independence, the West Indies were more important to the British Crown than the mainland colonies. And settlement of the islands affected settlement on the mainland. They traded with each other and the mainland was a safety valve for the crowded islands. Ironically, the future land of the free was populated by many slaves. The conquering powers -- British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish -- enslaved and killed the native population in one of the greatest genocides in history. Since the Native Americans died too quickly to get much forced labor from them, indentured servants came over from Europe. If they made it through five years -- rather unlikely -- they would be free. Soon, desperation for labor brought African slaves. Taylor explains the push-pull nature of much of this migration. Some came because they were dragged in chains and some came because they were starving in their old homes. The dangers of the Americas gave rise to a different class system in the New World. Color mattered more than class. The whites were forced to band together against real and perceived fears of non-whites. They also played Native American and blacks against each other. Europeans also made Native American alliances to gain advantage over their rivals. The continued clearing and claiming of the land by Euro-Americans dispersed Native Americans. Tribes reformed and new trade patterns sprang up. Some of the most useful portions of the book explain the impact on the lives of the Plains Indians, who were not generally in direct contact with the seaboard colonies. The book is also discusses colonies in the American Southwest and the Russian colonial effort, which are too often ignored by historians. In most respects, the book is a worthy read. If not for some flaws, I would have given it another star. It suffers from lack of footnotes/endnotes. The book ends abruptly with Hawaiian King Kamehameha's death in 1819, then references American dominance of the islands in 1898. Some bridge needs to be made here. While reasonably well-written, the writing lacks sparkle and is rather pedestrian. That said, "American Colonies" is a well-rounded introduction to colonial history and would be a good American history textbook.

Great Book:
This is a great book with a comprehensive scope about the settlement of America. What sets it apart from any other text is it's scope and approach. Instead of treating American history as a white anglo saxon story Taylor shows us the full range of human experience on the whole North American continent. While his focus is primarily on what would become the continental US he doesn't neglect Mexico or Canada. He also disrupts the traditional storyline of Anglo Saxon landings on the west caost and progressive advance inward into an "empty continent". Taylor shows us not only the Amerindians who were living in the American continent but the Spanish and MExicans in much of the American west, the French fur traders in the interior and the Russian settlements in the northeast. This is a great book for anyone wanting an overivew of American settlements.

Comprehensive, Broad and Excellent:
Alan Taylor has written a very thorough history of the peopling of the American continent that clearly takes its inspiration from Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel." The human and demographic needs which controlled the pace and flow of early migration to North America as well as preordained the outcome of the clash between European and Indian cultures is the backbone of this impressive book. Although political decisions and the ambitions of kings as well as intrepid adventurers started the age of exploration, it was clearly economics which governed the establishment and success of colonies and determined whether or not landings and forts could attract sufficient settlers to become colonies as opposed to remaining lonely outposts garrisoned by impressed soldiers and agents of mercantilists. (This is not to belittle the role of imperial competition and advantage in colonial expansion, but those goals were either in pursuit of wealth or in response to the Spanish, who got started first and reaped an empire-enhancing wealth transfer early on -- one of such dimensions that the competitors had to respond). Different policies played a role in the success or failure of colonial adventures. The Spanish combined Catholic mission with regard to conversion of Indians with sheer terror to support their efforts. The French, possessed of cold lands productive in animal furs but not in the kind of agriculture that could support large numbers of French transplants, had to rely on alliance and diplomacy with local natives to maintain their presence. Both of these kingdoms governed their colonies directly from the crown, which allowed for uniformity of control as well as mistakes. The English approached colonization in a piecework model which led to differing methods of implantation and maintenance of their settlements. Productive early colonies like the Leeward Islands were given over to large land barons (after the local populations were wiped out by European germs), slavery and brutal control to keep imported Africans in check processing sugar cane). The New England colonies -- given over to Puritans as a convenient way to exile them from England proper, were religious refuges which at times had a somewhat more tolerant view of life with the native population than the Spanish but much less than the French (although they succeeded in clearing the area of Indians through disease and war just the same). The Southern colonies featured crown dominions (in the case of Virginia) that relied on control and force to keep slave labor and Indians at bay. The pressure for more land to plant profitable tobacco led to a brutalization of Indians who stood in the way of plantation formation. Pennsylvania, in the middle colonial region, was for a time a unique experiment of the private citizen William Penn that took perhaps the most enlightened (this is relative to the time of course) view of life with a native population. Never much under crown auspices for most of its history, the Penn experiment became a beacon for the outcasts (political, religious, economic) of the Old World who could gumption up enough nerve to transplant across the Atlantic. Nowhere in the English system did the local Indian population enjoy a better coexistence than in Pennsylvania (though that too, proved illusory in the long run as population pressures and disease led to the same land grabbing mentality as in other colonies). What Taylor does extremely well is focus on the forces that controlled political decisions regarding colonization and development in North America. Germs played an incredible role, killing off 90% of Native Americans before large-scale contact with Europeans in most places. Technology and organization next doomed those few Indians left in this war for the continent. They could simply not compete with guns, horses and allegiance to crown or colony when they themselves were usually tiny members of small bands numbering in the hundreds or low thousands (with the exceptions of the Inca and Aztecs) who often warred with the next band as much as the local colonists. It is interesting that Taylor, while very sympathetic and true to what is basically a story of annihilation of native cultures (for the vast part by disease, the great unplanned and unimagined ally of the Europeans), does not paint the Indians as a harmonious peaceful people inhabiting an Eden like continent prior to its despoiling by Europeans. While Indians lived fairly harmoniously with their surroundings (though not with each other as Taylor points out often, slavery, warfare, kidnapping and competition being normal aspects of inter-Indian affairs), they nonetheless shaped the local environment and remade the land to suit their needs. In agricultural areas, burning was practiced and evidence shows plant species were extinguished and changed to make way for or as a result of Indian farming. Rather than living as one with nature, the Indians shaped nature for their purposes, although their lack of technology and political organization made their imprint upon the land much less severe than that of the men of Europe. Taylor focuses much of the book on the Spanish, English and French experiences - proper since they were the major players. This book is comprehensive though, and tells the story of Dutch, Sweedish and Russian contact with North America. Taylor also describes the Native peopling of North America, spending time describing their interaction with each other, their management of life on the continent prior to European discovery as well as attempts to survive with the new realities wrought by Europe. This is a very comprehensive and thorough book that takes a look at the peopling of the North American continent through the broad lens of history. This appropriate approach spends a lot of time on the geographic, demographic, economic and biological factors that informed, shaped and in many cases pre-ordained the outcomes when native cultures clashed with European and as European countries jockeyed for position in the New World. This is a very worthwhile reading and would serve as an excellent jumping off point for those whose interest would lead them to more conventional political histories of the colonial period.