Library Catalog
On the Shelf at CCBC Libraries
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African Americans in the Colonial Era
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What are the origins of slavery and race-based prejudice in the mainland American colonies? How did the Atlantic slave trade operate to supply African labor to colonial America? How did African-American culture form and evolve? How did the American Revolution affect men and women of African descent? Previous editions of this work depicted African-Americans in the American mainland colonies as their contemporaries saw them: as persons from one of the four continents who interacted economically, socially, and politically in a vast, complex Atlantic world. It showed how the society that resulted in colonial America reflected the mix of Atlantic cultures and that a group of these people eventually used European ideas to support creation of a favorable situation for those largely of European descent, omitting Africans, who constituted their primary labor force. In this fourth edition of African Americans in the Colonial Era: From African Origins through the American Revolution, acclaimed scholar Donald R. Wright offers new interpretations to provide a clear understanding of the Atlantic slave trade and the nature of the early African-American experience. This revised edition incorporates the latest data, a fresh Atlantic perspective, and an updated bibliographical essay to thoroughly explore African-Americans' African origins, their experience crossing the Atlantic, and their existence in colonial America in a broadened, more nuanced way.
Call Number: E185 .W94 2017 -
Colonial America
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By examining the lives of the colonists through their own words - in diaries, letters, sermons, newspaper columns, and poems - Colonial America: A History in Documents, Second Edition reveals how immigrants, despite their vast differences, laid the foundations for a new nation: the UnitedStates.One of the earliest documents is Sir Walter Ralegh's account of the failed colony at Roanoke, the first British settlement. The harrowing experiences of the first colonists are recorded in Captain John Smith's tale of Indian attack and starvation at Jamestown and in a young Massachusetts colonist'sletter to his English parents pleading for supplies. A Catawba Indian's letter to the governor of South Carolina describing a devastating smallpox epidemic is evidence of the even greater toll that war and illness had on the Native Americans. From these difficult beginnings, the colonies developedinto vibrant communities. A poem by a young Englishman sentenced to be deported is the story of one laborer who helped build the colonies. An exchange of letters between friends about choosing a husband provides insight into colonial family life. The title page of a book about evil spirits and aMohawk Indian's telling of the creation myth demonstrate the diversity of colonial religious beliefs.American colonists were also guided by secular codes of behavior. Young George Washington's exercise book filled with rigid rules of conduct exemplifies the manners and mores of the colonies' future leaders. A picture essay about the material world gathers objects ranging from military artifacts tofine furnishings to reveal how the colonies evolved from rough outposts to near-independent states. Using such historical evidence, Colonial America provides a captivating look at the textured lives of the people who founded the United States.The second edition includes a new chapter, "The Tumult of Empire," on the imperial tensions that erupted during this period and the internal strife within the colonies, as demonstrated in the violence of Bacon's Rebellion, Governor Andros's harsh ruling over the Dominion of New England, theoverturning of provincial regimes in response to William and Mary's Glorious Revolution, and the golden age of piracy. Twenty-eight new visual documents enrich this edition, including a map of Native American villages, a proclamation on the destruction of forests, and Hippopotamus hide whips used onslaves. Ten new sidebars provide shorter documents, such as John Winthrop's journal entry on the effects of the English Civil War in Massachusetts, a 1730 poem about growing Philadelphia, and a 1743 newspaper advertisement aimed at German-speaking colonists. There is a new note on sources andinterpretation and there are updates to the further reading and websites recommendations.
Call Number: E187 .G73 2012 -
Before the Revolution
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America began, we are often told, with the Founding Fathers, the men who waged a revolution and created a unique place called the United States. We may acknowledge the early Jamestown and Puritan colonists and mourn the dispossession of Native Americans, but we rarely grapple with the complexity of the nation's pre-revolutionary past. In this pathbreaking revision, Daniel Richter shows that the United States has a much deeper history than is apparent--that far from beginning with a clean slate, it is a nation with multiple pasts that stretch back as far as the Middle Ages, pasts whose legacies continue to shape the present. Exploring a vast range of original sources, Before the Revolution spans more than seven centuries and ranges across North America, Europe, and Africa. Richter recovers the lives of a stunning array of peoples--Indians, Spaniards, French, Dutch, Africans, English--as they struggled with one another and with their own people for control of land and resources. Their struggles occurred in a global context and built upon the remains of what came before. Gradually and unpredictably, distinctive patterns of North American culture took shape on a continent where no one yet imagined there would be nations called the United States, Canada, or Mexico. By seeing these trajectories on their own dynamic terms, rather than merely as a prelude to independence, Richter's epic vision reveals the deepest origins of American history.
Call Number: E169.12 .R497 2011 -
American Colonies
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A multicultural, multinational history of colonial America from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Internal Enemy and American Revolutions In the first volume in the Penguin History of the United States, edited by Eric Foner, Alan Taylor challenges the traditional story of colonial history by examining the many cultures that helped make America, from the native inhabitants from milennia past, through the decades of Western colonization and conquest, and across the entire continent, all the way to the Pacific coast. Transcending the usual Anglocentric version of our colonial past, he recovers the importance of Native American tribes, African slaves, and the rival empires of France, Spain, the Netherlands, and even Russia in the colonization of North America. Moving beyond the Atlantic seaboard to examine the entire continent, American Colonies reveals a pivotal period in the global interaction of peoples, cultures, plants, animals, and microbes. In a vivid narrative, Taylor draws upon cutting-edge scholarship to create a timely picture of the colonial world characterized by an interplay of freedom and slavery, opportunity and loss. "Formidable . . . provokes us to contemplate the ways in which residents of North America have dealt with diversity." -The New York Times Book Review
Call Number: E188 .T35 2002
Digital Archive
Streaming Video
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The Unfinished Nation-Coming to America: Portrait of Colonial LifeExamines the transatlantic journey to colonial America and documents the way of life of indentured servants and slaves. Discusses newcomers' adaptation and the integration of their cultures in a newly formed community.
Websites
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U.S. History Primary Source Timeline: Colonial Settlement, 1600s - 1763
Library of Congress -
Colonial America
from The History Channel
Databases
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U.S. History This link opens in a new window
Articles, essays, and primary sources on the history of the United States. -
ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
Articles on any subject. This is a good place to start.
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JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Journals, books, images, and primary sources about many subjects.
Online From CCBC Libraries
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American Heritage History of Early America
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Here, from American Heritage, is the human, vital, dramatic story of America's beginnings - from the journeys of early explorers and the founding of Plymouth and Jamestown to the French and Indian Wars and victory in the War of Independence.
Publication Date: 2015 -
Daily Life in the Colonial City
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An exploration of day-to-day urban life in colonial America. The American city was an integral part of the colonial experience. Although the five largest cities in colonial America--Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Charles Town, and Newport--held less than ten percent of the American popularion on the eve of the American Revolution, they were particularly significant for a people who resided mostly in rural areas, and wilderness. These cities and other urban hubs contained and preserved the European traditions, habits, customs, and institutions from which their residents had emerged. They were also centers of commerce, transportation, and communication; held seats of colonial government; and were conduits for the transfer of Old World cultures. With a focus on the five largest cities but also including life in smaller urban centers, Krawczynski's nuanced treatment will fill a significant gap on the reference shelves and serve as an essential source for students of American history, sociology, and culture. In-depth, thematic chapters explore many aspects of urban life in colonial America, including working conditions for men, women, children, free blacks, and slaves as well as strikes and labor issues; the class hierarchy and its purpose in urban society; childbirth, courtship, family, and death; housing styles and urban diet; and the threat of disease and the growth of poverty.
Publication Date: 2013 -
America's Beginnings
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At a time when surveys reveal that Americans know less and less about our past, Tony Williams provides entertaining and informative descriptions of 50 of the most important and dramatic events from the colonial and Revolutionary period--some known and some forgotten--from the Mayflower Compact to the Annapolis Convention. Published in association with The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, America's Beginnings takes the reader throughout the American colonies and introduces many leading figures, from John Smith and John Winthrop to the Founding Fathers. Along the way, Williams examines the principles that led colonists to come to America and succeeding generations to become a free and independent nation. Read individually or from cover to cover, these stories illuminate the founding principles and heroic struggles that established the country and shaped the American character.
Publication Date: 2010 -
Becoming America
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Multinational, profit-driven, materialistic, politically self-conscious, power-hungry, religiously plural: America three hundred years ago - and today. Here are Britain's mainland American colonies after 1680, in the process of becoming the first modern society - a society the earliest colonists never imagined, a new order of the ages that anticipated the American revolution, Jon Butler's panoramic view of the colonies in this epoch transforms our customary picture of pre-Revolutionary America. it reveals a strikingly modern character that belies the 18th century quaintness fixed in history.
Publication Date: 2000
