Colonial American History

This carefully collected volume of eight essays and 24 supporting documents allows access to the best and latest scholarship about mainland British North America. This book demonstrates how differences in race, ethnicity, gender, and social status were continually negotiated throughout Britain's North American colonies. It includes essays about Native Americans, the transatlantic slave trade, the rise of gentility, regulation of the sexual behavior of both white and black women, and the creation of new religious practices. Overall, Colonial American History reveals that this amalgamation of cultures presented the European colonists, Native Americans and Africans alike with the opportunity - and necessity - to establish new identities and create new forms of community and authority. The book includes a general introduction, chapter introductions, and supporting documents for each essay. The documents - diaries, letters, trial summaries, treaties, slave codes, and travel narratives - are designed to illuminate key issues raised in the essays and facilitate lively, informed classroom discussion.