The History Book Club discussion

This thread was recommended by Christy.

The topic of this thread is focused on Colonial History.

The colonial history of the United States covers the history from the start of European settlement until 1776 when the Thirteen Colonies declared their independence as the United States of America during King George III's rule.

In the late 16th century, England, France, Spain and the Netherlands launched major colonization programs in eastern North America.[1] Small early attempts—such as the English Lost Colony of Roanoke—often disappeared; everywhere the death rate of the first arrivals was very high.

Nevertheless successful colonies were established. European settlers came from a variety of social and religious groups. No aristocrats settled permanently, but a number of adventurers, soldiers, farmers, and tradesmen arrived. Diversity was an American characteristic as the Dutch of New Netherland, the Swedes and Finns of New Sweden, the English Quakers of Pennsylvania, the English Puritans of New England, the English settlers of Jamestown, and the "worthy poor" of Georgia, came to the new continent and built colonies with distinctive social, religious, political and economic styles. Occasionally one colony took control of another (during wars between their European parents).

Only in Nova Scotia (now part of Canada) did the conquerors expel the previous colonists. Instead they all lived side by side in peace.

There were no major civil wars among the 13 colonies, and the two chief armed rebellions (in Virginia in 1676 and in New York in 1689-91) were short-lived failures. Wars between the French and the British—the French and Indian Wars and Father Rale's War -- were recurrent, and involved French-support for Wabanaki Confederacy attacks on the frontiers. By 1760 France was defeated and the British seized its colonies.

The four distinct regions were: New England, the Middle Colonies, the Chesapeake Bay Colonies (Upper South) and the Lower South. Some historians add a fifth region, the frontier, which was never separately organized.

By the time European settlers arrived around 1600–1650, the majority of the Native Americans living in the eastern United States had been decimated by new diseases, introduced to them decades before by explorers and sailors.

Source: Wikipedia

Remainder of article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial...

This thread was requested by group member Premier Digital.

One of the great mysteries of colonial America is that of Roanoke Island and the Lost Colony.

First Settlement

Roanoke Island is famous for having the first ever English colonial settlement in the New World. But what it is most famous for is how mysteriously these first English settlers disappeared after a short time. Some say that they were killed; others say that they hid; still others say that they were absorbed into the native tribes. These settlers in Roanoke Island, who mysteriously disappeared without a trace, are popularly referred to as “The Lost Colony.”

While Jamestown was the first permanent settlement in the New World, Roanoke Island was host to English settlers even before the start of the 16th century. Roanoke Island is where the first child of English decent was born in the New World, and there had been many speculations as to what happened to the colony after that. King James I of England even made it a point to go on the first voyage to Jamestown to search for the first colony in America.

The Return

It was in 1584 when the first group of English settlers made settlements in Roanoke Island. This first batch of settlers consisted of a hundred men, but the quickly abandoned their first settlement due to harsh weather conditions and their failure to keep a good relationship with the native tribes. After three years, the second batch of English settlers set foot on the island in July. After a month, the first English child was born in the New World. A week after Eleanor Dare’s child was born, his grandfather, Captain John White, set sail for England to bring them back food supplies and materials. What Captain White expected to be a short trip turned out to be a long stay in his motherland. The Spaniards attacked England, and there were many other unexpected events, and so he managed to return to Roanoke Island three years later.

A Mystery

What Captain John White saw was mysterious and utterly unbelievable. His daughter, Eleanor Dare, and his granddaughter, Virginia Dare, were nowhere to be seen! He saw no one from the English settlement he left three years ealier, and the place was bare of any signs of life as even the houses were nowhere to be seen. The letters “CRO” was sketched on a nearby tree and the word “Croatan” was found on a post, but even a visit to the Croatoan Indians gave him no answer as to where his family and the English colony had gone.

Some say that the colony was wiped out by a violent deadly storm, and it was easy to imagine that on an island. Others say that the settlers had been the subject of brutal attacks by nearby native tribes, to help prevent future colonization on the island. Others say that they had intermingled with and become absorbed into the native population, that they became so comfortable with living as natives that they ultimately decided not to return to the colony. The loss of more than a hundred people—consisting of 90 men, 17 women and 9 children—marks the mysterious end of the first ever attempt to establish a permanent settlement in the New World.

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. Great book and good insight into the life of Pilgrims, Puritans and Natives

America At 1750: A Social Portrait

Hi Gabriel, thank you for your add. You did a great job with the first book cover; but you also need to add the author's photo if available and the author's link like the following:

by Nathaniel Philbrick

Also,

by Richard Hofstadter

In order to practice how we do citations here, please go to the thread called Mechanics of the Board in the Help Desk folder. Here is the link.

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2...

An in-depth look at all the attempts, both successful and non-successful, to colonize North America.

American Colonies: The Settling of North America

by Alan Taylor

Synopsis

With this volume, Alan Taylor challenges the traditional story of colonial history by examining the many cultures that helped make America. 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.

Thank you Jill.

You are most welcome. This is not one of my areas of focus but there are some great books out there regarding colonial days.

I have used this book:

Everyday Life in Early America

David Freeman Hawke

Synopsis

In this clearly written volume, Hawke provides enlightening and colorful descriptions of early Colonial Americans and debunks many widely held assumptions about 17th century settlers. He argues that most pioneers were not young and that their families weren't much larger than present-day households. In addition, he states that adults lived longer than has been believed and that most early settlers were artisans and craftsmen with little knowledge of farming, although the wilderness soon forced them to adapt. Hawke includes entertaining discussions of what the first white Americans ate (for example, raccoon was served in New York). He also discusses how colonial Americans were punished for crimes and how they treated enslaved blacks and indentured servants. This book is informative but could have been more deeply researched.

I have been looking for a book that covers the Siege of Boston in the same depth as Thomas McGuire's Philadelphia Campaign.

Thomas J. McGuire

Has anyone read something that might fit the bill? Would be nice to find an author who is able to combine the military aspects of the siege with daily life in the city.

I just finished reading by John M. Barry. I can't recommend this book enough as it as blown open a part of American history rarely researched and scrutinized fully.

Now this book is a tale of two people [principally]: Sir Edward Coke and the titular subject Roger Williams, Puritan minister and theologian and political philosopher.

This book observes Coke's battles with King James I & King Charles I and more importantly Francis Bacon in the years before the English Civil War. It also examines Roger Williams and his relationship with John Winthrop and the New England colonies. Both Coke and Williams (who was Coke's apprentice) major concern was the role of religion and conscience in governing men's lives. I don't want to spoil this book too much but let's say that I no longer have to give half-hearted credit to Thomas Jefferson because Roger Williams truly was the one for introducing "Soul Liberty" i.e. freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and democracy to the USA and the UK. I believe he may be one of the most important political philosophers of modern times. If you wish to agree or disagree with me I would highly suggest that you first read this book.

Ken thanks for bringing the book “Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty” to our attention. It appears to fill a bit of a void on a very important subject. The title certainly is powerful.

John M. Barry

Thank you Mark, I was really blown away to the significance of Roger Williams to modern America (and the UK and British Commonwealth). The only things I ever learned in school about this point in times is PILGRIMS...and maybe John Winthrop (he's the "City on A Hill" guy that Reagan quoted). I never knew such a ground-breaking character existed. I go into more detail on my review of the book but yes I was surprised.

by John M. Barry

Schools now generally talk about roger Williams, but it pertains to him leaving Massachusetts colony for religious reasons, paying the natives for their land, and if lucky his founding of the baptist church.

Do they mention his philosophy of "Soul Liberty"? I would be very surprised if they did in this polarizing climate.

No, too much detail for school kids to grasp and learn in short period of time. At least in Texas we cover from exploration in the Americas to reconstruction era in 9 months.

That sounds about right (i.e. how it was for me), though I know in American History (11th grade) we spent more time on the post-bellum to about Reagan. I can't remember that well at the moment

I've been doing extensive research recently about the Roanoke settlements. Here is an excellent source: "Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony Roanoke" by Lee Miller.
Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony

Harold, good try with the citation: but it should be bookcover, author's photo when available and always the author's link.

Like so:

by Lee Miller (no author's photo available)

Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America

Daniel K. Richter

Synopsis

In the beginning, North America was Indian country. But only in the beginning. After the opening act of the great national drama, Native Americans yielded to the westward rush of European settlers.

Or so the story usually goes. Yet, for three centuries after Columbus, Native people controlled most of eastern North America and profoundly shaped its destiny. In Facing East from Indian Country, Daniel K. Richter keeps Native people center-stage throughout the story of the origins of the United States.

Viewed from Indian country, the sixteenth century was an era in which Native people discovered Europeans and struggled to make sense of a new world. Well into the seventeenth century, the most profound challenges to Indian life came less from the arrival of a relative handful of European colonists than from the biological, economic, and environmental forces the newcomers unleashed. Drawing upon their own traditions, Indian communities reinvented themselves and carved out a place in a world dominated by transatlantic European empires. In 1776, however, when some of Britain's colonists rebelled against that imperial world, they overturned the system that had made Euro-American and Native coexistence possible. Eastern North America only ceased to be an Indian country because the revolutionaries denied the continent's first peoples a place in the nation they were creating.

In rediscovering early America as Indian country, Richter employs the historian's craft to challenge cherished assumptions about times and places we thought we knew well, revealing Native American experiences at the core of the nation's birth and identity.

I am currently reading by Bernard Bailyn, which explores the earliest (post-Roanoke) European settlement of Virginia, Maryland, and New England. I'm enjoying it very much so far...

Synopsis (from Amazon.com)

They were a mixed multitude—from England, the Netherlands, the German and Italian states, France, Africa, Sweden, and Finland. They moved to the western hemisphere for different reasons, from different social backgrounds and cultures, and under different auspices and circumstances. Even the majority that came from England fit no distinct socioeconomic or cultural pattern. They came from all over the realm, from commercialized London and the southeast; from isolated farmlands in the north still close to their medieval origins; from towns in the Midlands, the south, and the west; from dales, fens, grasslands, and wolds. They represented the entire spectrum of religious communions from Counter-Reformation Catholicism to Puritan Calvinism and Quakerism.

They came hoping to re-create if not to improve these diverse lifeways in a remote and, to them, barbarous environment. But their stories are mostly of confusion, failure, violence, and the loss of civility as they sought to normalize abnormal situations and recapture lost worlds. And in the process they tore apart the normalities of the people whose world they had invaded.

Later generations, reading back into the past the outcomes they knew, often gentrified this passage in the peopling of British North America, but there was nothing genteel about it. Bailyn shows that it was a brutal encounter—brutal not only between the Europeans and native peoples and between Europeans and Africans, but among Europeans themselves. All, in their various ways, struggled for survival with outlandish aliens, rude people, uncultured people, and felt themselves threatened with descent into squalor and savagery. In these vivid stories of individual lives—some new, some familiar but rewritten with new details and contexts—Bailyn gives a fresh account of the history of the British North American population in its earliest, bitterly contested years.

Thank you for this thread. I love the period of American history through the revolution and, while I've been reading medievel history lately, I'm looking to return to the colonial period by year's end.

Loved the McGuire books!

Great, Ted, I look forward to your posts.

Don't forget to cite the books, it helps so we may click and look:

Thomas J. McGuire

I just finished by Bernard Bailyn, and it was a really interesting read. Bailyn really drives home the point that the colonizing populations from Europe were far from a homogeneous collection of individuals with a shared set of values. Historians have gone to great lengths, and justifiably so, to outline the clash of Native American cultures with those of the incoming Europeans. The book builds on this by showing just how diverse the incoming European populations truly were, not only in terms of nationality, but in their religious views and socio-economic status, all of which determined to a great extent how they interacted not only with Native Americans but with each other. Fascinating stuff.

Great, Charles, I might have to add this to my list.

One of the great scholars and historians who focused on American Colonial history has passed away at the age of 97. Edmund Morgan, Emeritus Professor of History at Yale University, where he taught from 1955-86, was truly one of the great historians of the 20th century.

Morgan earned his PhD in history at Harvard University where he studied under the immortal Perry Miller. While at Yale, one of Morgan's most famous doctoral students was Joseph Ellis.

Winner of both a Pulitzer Prize (in 2006 for his lifetime works) and a National Humanities Medal in 2000, Morgan wrote more than two dozen books during his long, distinguished career. He had too many books to probably link here, but anyone who took undergraduate American colonial history in college during the last four decades may have had one or several of his books assigned as required class reading.

Edmund Sears Morgan

Perry Miller

Joseph Ellis

I read this, too, thanks for mentioning his passing. Here are some of his works

by Edmund Sears Morgan (no photo)

I haven't read much about this period recently unless you include by David McCullough which touches on the end of this period

However there were several historical fiction works geared towards young adults that I enjoyed as a child and youth. The only one I can at this moment bring to memory is:
by Ann Rinaldi
it covers the journey of the Mayflower at the pilgrims first year at Plymouth Rock

Good to know, Clifford.

Don't forget to add author photos:

by David McCullough

by Ann Rinaldi

Craig wrote: "One of the great scholars and historians who focused on American Colonial history has passed away at the age of 97. Edmund Morgan, Emeritus Professor of History at Yale University, where he taught..."

Thanks Craig as always for your posts - remember when citing authors to always cite the author's photo and the author's link.

If there is no photo available then simply put (no photo) after the link.

Edmund S. Morgan (no photo)

Perry Miller (no photo)

Joseph Ellis (no photo)

The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other

by Tzvetan Todorov

Synopsis:

The Conquest of America is a fascinating study of cultural confrontation in the New World, with implications far beyond sixteenth-century America. The book offers an original interpretation of the Spaniards’ conquest, colonization, and destruction of pre-Columbian cultures in Mexico and the Caribbean. Using sixteenth-century sources, the distinguished French writer and critic Tzvetan Todorov examines the beliefs and behavior of the Spanish conquistadors and of the Aztecs, adversaries in a clash of cultures that resulted in the near extermination of Mesoamerica’s Indian population.

The Presidio: Bastion of the Spanish Borderlands

by Max L. Moorhead (no photo)

Synopsis:

The presidio was as essential an element of Spanish civilization in the Mexican North and the American Southwest as the communities it was established to protect-missions, settlements, mines, and ranches. A fortified outpost in hostile Indian country, it not only assured Spanish occupation and retention of that vast region but also participated in its development.

The presidio was first and foremost a garrisoned fort presiding over a military district. It was most often situated strategically in hostile terrain, forming an enclave of Spanish civilization and Christianity in an alien and "pagan" surrounding, as was its prototype in Spanish Morocco.

Militarily the presidio played a role that the United States Army fort was later to assume in the West. But in its other functions as market center, sanctuary, social unit, religious outpost, and administrative seat, it had an impact on the frontier that was much more than military.

The Presidio is the first full account of this important aspect of the Spanish dominion in the New World. The author spent many years in the United States, Mexico, and Spain, searching out the sites of the presidios-most of which have now crumbled to dust. In Spain he discovered detailed plans of many of them, which are included in the book.

This is an indispensable work for every historian of the West and Mexico.

Colonial America: A History, 1565 - 1776

by Richard Middleton

Synopsis:

Accompanied by maps, contemporary illustrations, chronologies, documents, and a fully updated and expanded bibliography, this comprehensive and readable history of the colonial period offers a fascinating analysis of the evolution of a new and distinctive society.Fully revised and expanded third edition, with an updated bibliographyIncludes new chapter on the Spanish in Florida, New Mexico, and Texas, as well as an account of the French settlements in LouisianaProvides dozens of maps, illustrations, chronologies, and documents

Thanks all

This book covers the first decade of the Plymouth Colony and what life was like for the settlers.

Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History

by Nick Bunker(no photo)

Synopsis:

At the end of 1618, a blazing green star soared across the night sky over the northern hemisphere. From the Philippines to the Arctic, the comet became a sensation and a symbol, a warning of doom or a promise of salvation. Two years later, as the Pilgrims prepared to sail across the Atlantic on board the Mayflower, the atmosphere remained charged with fear and expectation. Men and women readied themselves for war, pestilence, or divine retribution. Against this background, and amid deep economic depression, the Pilgrims conceived their enterprise of exile.

Within a decade, despite crisis and catastrophe, they built a thriving settlement at New Plymouth, based on beaver fur, corn, and cattle. In doing so, they laid the foundations for Massachusetts, New England, and a new nation. Using a wealth of new evidence from landscape, archaeology, and hundreds of overlooked or neglected documents, Nick Bunker gives a vivid and strikingly original account of the Mayflower project and the first decade of the Plymouth Colony. From mercantile London and the rural England of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I to the mountains and rivers of Maine, he weaves a rich narrative that combines religion, politics, money, science, and the sea.

The Pilgrims were entrepreneurs as well as evangelicals, political radicals as well as Christian idealists. Making Haste from Babylon tells their story in unrivaled depth, from their roots in religious conflict and village strife at home to their final creation of a permanent foothold in America.

I bought this today--the Kindle version is only $3.03.

Empires at War: The French and Indian War and the Struggle for North America, 1754-1763

Synopsis
"Empires at War" captures the sweeping panorama of this first world war, especially in its descriptions of the strategy and intensity of the engagements in North America, many of them epic struggles between armies in the wilderness. William M. Fowler Jr. views the conflict both from British prime minister William Pitt's perspective-- as a vast chessboard, on which William Shirley's campaign in North America and the fortunes of Frederick the Great of Prussia were connected-- and from that of field commanders on the ground in America and Canada, who contended with disease, brutal weather, and scant supplies, frequently having to build the very roads they marched on. As in any conflict, individuals and events stand out: Sir William Johnson, a baronet and a major general of the British forces, who sometimes painted his face and dressed like a warrior when he fought beside his Indian allies; Edward Braddock's doomed march across Pennsylvania; the valiant French defense of Fort Ticonderoga; and the legendary battle for Quebec between armies led by the arisocratic French tactical genius, the marquis de Montcalm, and the gallant, if erratic, young Englishman James Wolfe-- both of whom died on the Plains of Abraham on September 13, 1759.

by William M. Fowler Jr. (no photo)

A book showing the effect of the Quaker ethos on the shaping of America in colonial days.

How The Quakers Invented American

by David Yount(no photo)

Synopsis

Nationally syndicated columnist David Yount shows how Quakers and the Society of Friends shaped the basic distinctive features of American life, from the days of the colonies, revolution and founders, to the civil rights movements of modern times: freedom, equality, community, straightforwardness, and spirituality. Quaker prep schools and colleges continue to guide future generations of mostly non-Quaker students. Quaker spirituality is the basis for much of contemporary Christian spirituality. Yount makes clear that America would not have become what it is without the profound influence of the Friends.(

The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America

by Russell Shorto

Synopsis:

In the late 60s, a NY State Library archivist discovered 12,000 pages of centuries-old correspondence, court cases, legal contracts & reports from the Dutch colony centered on Manhattan, which predated the 13 original American colonies. For the past 30 years scholar Charles Gehring has been translating this trove, which has been declared a national treasure. Shorto has used this material to construct a narrative of Manhattan's founding that gives a fresh perspective on how America began. In an account that blends a novelist's grasp of storytelling with cutting-edge scholarship, The Island at the Center of the World strips Manhattan of its asphalt, taking us back to a wilderness island--a hunting ground for Indians, populated by wolves & bears--that became a prize in the global power struggle between the English & Dutch.

Shorto shows that America's founding wasn't the work of English settlers alone but a result of the clashing of these two 17th century powers. In fact, it was Amsterdam--Europe's most liberal city, with a policy of tolerance & a polyglot society dedicated to free trade--that became the model for the city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan. While the Puritans of New England were founding an intolerant society, on Manhattan the Dutch created a free-trade, upwardly-mobile melting pot that would help shape not only New York, but America. The story moves from the halls of power in London & The Hague to naval encounters. The characters in the saga, those playing parts in Manhattan's founding, range from Rene Descartes to James, Duke of York, to prostitutes & smugglers. At the heart of the story is a power struggle between Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director of the Dutch colony, & a forgotten hero named Adriaen van der Donck, a maverick, liberal lawyer whose political gamesmanship, commitment to individual freedom & love of his new country would have a lasting impact on the nation's history.

Sea Venture: Shipwreck, Survival, and the Salvation of the First English Colony in the New World

by Kieran Doherty

Synopsis:

In one of the most triumphant high sea stories ever told, Kieran Doherty brings to life the true story of the ship that rescued the Jamestown settlement in 1610 and ensured England's place in the New World. When the Sea Venture left England in 1609, it was flagship in a fleet of nine bound for Jamestown with roughly 600 settlers and badly needed supplies aboard. But after four weeks at sea, as the voyage neared its end, a hurricane devastated the fleet, leaving the Sea Venture shipwrecked on the island of Bermuda. It took Sea Venture's passengers nearly a year and half to reach their destination. Awaiting them was not a thriving colony, but instead the remaining fifty colonists--beleaguered, desperate and hungry. But, the question remains, would the English have lost their place in the New World if the ship never arrived? A story of strife and triumph, but above all, endurance, Sea Venture begins and ends in hope and remains one of the greatest "What Ifs?" in history. With a bravado reminiscent of Patrick O'Brien's legendary sea sagas, Doherty braves the elements, delivering a powerful history willed by a people destined to change the New World forever.

The Brave New World: A History of Early America

by Peter Charles Hoffer (no photo)

Synopsis:

The Brave New World covers the span of early American history, from 30,000 years before Europeans ever landed on North American shores to creation of the new nation. With its exploration of the places and peoples of early America, this comprehensive, lively narrative brings together the most recent scholarship on the colonial and revolutionary eras, Native Americans, slavery, politics, war, and the daily lives of ordinary people. The revised, enlarged edition includes a new chapter carrying the story through the American Revolution, the War for Independence, and the creation of the Confederation. Additional material on the frontier, the Southwest and the Caribbean, the slave trade, religion, science and technology, and ecology broadens the text, and maps drawn especially for this edition will enable readers to follow the story more closely. The bibliographical essay, one of the most admired features of the first edition, has been expanded and brought up to date.

Peter Charles Hoffer combines the Atlantic Rim scholarship with a Continental perspective, illuminating early America from all angles—from its first settlers to the Spanish Century, from African slavery to the Salem witchcraft cases, from prayer and drinking practices to the development of complex economies, from the colonies' fight for freedom to an infant nation's struggle for political and economic legitimacy. Wide-ranging in scope, inclusive in content, the revised edition of The Brave New World continues to provide professors, students, and historians with an engaging and accessible history of early North America.

A New World: An Epic of Colonial America from the Founding of Jamestown to the Fall of Quebec

by Arthur Quinn (no photo)

Synopsis:

An epic of colonial America--from the founding of Jamestown to the fall of Quebec. This ambitious and extraordinary book challenges conventional historic narrative by presenting episodes in North America's history through the eyes and voices of Europeans who established the first colonial outposts here.

New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America

by Colin G. Calloway

Synopsis:

Although many Americans consider the establishment of the colonies as the birth of this country, in fact Early America already existed long before the arrival of the Europeans. From coast to coast, Native Americans had created enduring cultures, and the subsequent European invasion remade much of the existing land and culture. In New Worlds for All, Colin Calloway explores the unique and vibrant new cultures that Indians and Europeans forged together in early America. The journey toward this hybrid society kept Europeans' and Indians' lives tightly entwined: living, working, worshiping, traveling, and trading together—as well as fearing, avoiding, despising, and killing one another. In the West, settlers lived in Indian towns, eating Indian food. In Mohawk Valley, New York, Europeans tattooed their faces; Indians drank tea. And, a unique American identity emerged.

An upcoming book:
Release date: October 14, 2014

A Man Most Driven: Captain John Smith, Pocahontas and the Founding of America

by Peter Firstbrook (no photo)

Synopsis:

He fought and beheaded three Turkish commanders in duels. He was sold into slavery, then murdered his master to escape. He was captured by pirates — twice — and marched to the gallows to be hanged, only to be reprieved seconds before the noose dropped over his head. And all this happened before he was 30 years old. This is Captain John Smith’s life. Everyone knows the story of Pocahontas and how she saved John Smith. And were it not for Smith’s leadership, the Jamestown colony would surely have failed. Yet Smith was a far more ambitious explorer and soldier of fortune than these tales suggest — and a far more ambitious and truculent self-promoter, so much so that the crew of the Mayflower snubbed his services. Now, in the first major biography of Smith in decades, award-winning BBC filmmaker and author Peter Firstbrook traces the adventurer’s astonishing exploits across three continents, testing Smith’s claimed biography against the historical and geographical reality on the ground. A Man Most Driven delivers a fascinating, enlightening dissection of this mythology-making man and the invention of America.

The Golden Empire: Spain, Charles V, and the Creation of America

by Hugh Thomas

Synopsis:

From a master chronicler of Spanish history comes a magnificent work about the pivotal years from 1522 to 1566, when Spain was the greatest European power. Hugh Thomas has written a rich and riveting narrative of exploration, progress, and plunder. At its center is the unforgettable ruler who fought the French and expanded the Spanish empire, and the bold conquistadors who were his agents. Thomas brings to life King Charles V—first as a gangly and easygoing youth, then as a liberal statesman who exceeded all his predecessors in his ambitions for conquest (while making sure to maintain the humanity of his new subjects in the Americas), and finally as a besieged Catholic leader obsessed with Protestant heresy and interested only in profiting from those he presided over.

The Golden Empire also presents the legendary men whom King Charles V sent on perilous and unprecedented expeditions: Hernán Cortés, who ruled the “New Spain” of Mexico as an absolute monarch—and whose rebuilding of its capital, Tenochtitlan, was Spain’s greatest achievement in the sixteenth century; Francisco Pizarro, who set out with fewer than two hundred men for Peru, infamously executed the last independent Inca ruler, Atahualpa, and was finally murdered amid intrigue; and Hernando de Soto, whose glittering journey to settle land between Rio de la Palmas in Mexico and the southernmost keys of Florida ended in disappointment and death. Hugh Thomas reveals as never before their torturous journeys through jungles, their brutal sea voyages amid appalling storms and pirate attacks, and how a cash-hungry Charles backed them with loans—and bribes—obtained from his German banking friends.

A sweeping, compulsively readable saga of kings and conquests, armies and armadas, dominance and power, The Golden Empire is a crowning achievement of the Spanish world’s foremost historian.

Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire from Columbus to Magellan

by Hugh Thomas

Synopsis:

From one of the greatest historians of the Spanish world, here is a fresh and fascinating account of Spain’s early conquests in the Americas. Hugh Thomas’s magisterial narrative of Spain in the New World has all the characteristics of great historical literature: amazing discoveries, ambition, greed, religious fanaticism, court intrigue, and a battle for the soul of humankind.

Hugh Thomas shows Spain at the dawn of the sixteenth century as a world power on the brink of greatness. Her monarchs, Fernando and Isabel, had retaken Granada from Islam, thereby completing restoration of the entire Iberian peninsula to Catholic rule. Flush with success, they agreed to sponsor an obscure Genoese sailor’s plan to sail west to the Indies, where, legend purported, gold and spices flowed as if they were rivers. For Spain and for the world, this decision to send Christopher Columbus west was epochal—the dividing line between the medieval and the modern.

Spain’s colonial adventures began inauspiciously: Columbus’s meagerly funded expedition cost less than a Spanish princess’s recent wedding. In spite of its small scale, it was a mission of astounding scope: to claim for Spain all the wealth of the Indies. The gold alone, thought Columbus, would fund a grand Crusade to reunite Christendom with its holy city, Jerusalem.

The lofty aspirations of the first explorers died hard, as the pursuit of wealth and glory competed with the pursuit of pious impulses. The adventurers from Spain were also, of course, curious about geographical mysteries, and they had a remarkable loyalty to their country. But rather than bridging earth and heaven, Spain’s many conquests bore a bitter fruit. In their search for gold, Spaniards enslaved “Indians” from the Bahamas and the South American mainland. The eloquent protests of Bartolomé de las Casas, here much discussed, began almost immediately. Columbus and other Spanish explorers—Cortés, Ponce de León, and Magellan among them—created an empire for Spain of unsurpassed size and scope. But the door was soon open for other powers, enemies of Spain, to stake their claims.
Great men and women dominate these pages: cardinals and bishops, priors and sailors, landowners and warriors, princes and priests, noblemen and their determined wives.

Rivers of Gold is a great story brilliantly told. More significant, it is an engrossing history with many profound—often disturbing—echoes in the present.

Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America

by Giles Milton

Synopsis:

In April 1586, Queen Elizabeth I acquired a new and exotic title. A tribe of Native Americans had made her their weroanza—a word that meant "big chief". The news was received with great joy, both by the Queen and her favorite, Sir Walter Ralegh. His first American expedition had brought back a captive, Manteo, who caused a sensation in Elizabethan London. In 1587, Manteo was returned to his homeland as Lord and Governor, with more than one hundred English men, women, and children. In 1590, a supply ship arrived at the colony to discover that the settlers had vanished.

For almost twenty years the fate of Ralegh's colonists was to remain a mystery. When a new wave of settlers sailed to America to found Jamestown, their efforts to locate the lost colony were frustrated by the mighty chieftain, Powhatan, father of , who vowed to drive the English out of America. Only when it was too late did the settlers discover the incredible news that Ralegh's colonists had survived in the forests for almost two decades before being slaughtered in cold blood by henchmen. While Sir Walter Ralegh's "savage" had played a pivotal role in establishing the first English settlement in America, he had also unwittingly contributed to one of the earliest chapters in the decimation of the Native American population. The mystery of what happened to these colonists who seemed to vanish without a trace lies at the heart of this well-researched work of narrative history.

A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke

by James Horn (no photo)

Synopsis:

In 1587, John White and 117 men, women, and children landed off the coast of North Carolina on Roanoke Island, hoping to carve a colony from fearsome wilderness. A mere month later, facing quickly diminishing supplies and a fierce native population, White sailed back to England in desperation. He persuaded the wealthy Sir Walter Raleigh, the expedition’s sponsor, to rescue the imperiled colonists, but by the time White returned with aid the colonists of Roanoke were nowhere to be found. He never saw his friends or family again.In this gripping account based on new archival material, colonial historian James Horn tells for the first time the complete story of what happened to the Roanoke colonists and their descendants. A compellingly original examination of one of the great unsolved mysteries of American history, A Kingdom Strange will be essential reading for anyone interested in our national origins.

A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America

by James Horn (no photo)

Synopsis:

Jamestown -the first permanent English settlement in North America, after the disappearance of the Roanoke colony-is often given short shrift in histories of America. Founded thirteen years before the Mayflower landed, Jamestown occupies less space in our cultural memory than the Pilgrims of Plymouth. But as historian James Horn points out, many of the key tensions of Jamestown's early years became central to American history, for good and for ill: Jamestown introduced slavery into English-speaking North America; it became the first of England's colonies to adopt a representative government; and, it was the site of the first clashes between whites and Indians over territorial expansion. Jamestown began the tenuous, often violent, mingling of different peoples that came to embody the American experience. A Land as God Made It puts the Jamestown experience in the context of European geopolitics, giving prominence to the Spanish threat to extinguish the colony at the earliest opportunity. Jamestown-unlike Plymouth or Massachusetts-was England's bid to establish an empire to challenge the Spanish. With unparalleled knowledge of Jamestown's role in early American history, James Horn has written the definitive account of the colony that gave rise to America.

British America 1500-1800: Creating Colonies, Imagining an Empire

by Steven Sarson (no photo)

Synopsis:

Sarson combines the histories of colonies and empires—usually distinct fields of inquiry—in a sweeping introduction to, and interpretation of, the British-American New World. He argues that while settlers created colonies, the early empire remained a largely imaginary construct. When Britain finally imposed a vision of empire from the 1760s, the settlers declared their independence, forcing Britain to consider imperialism as something much more than imaginary. The account examines the way in which the New World was invented and offers a convincing analysis of the loss of the first British Empire.

Jerome wrote: "A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke

by [author:James Hor..."

Here is part of my goodreads review of this book.

Historian James Horn takes us methodically through the separate voyages to North Carolina’s Outer Banks and Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds beginning with the exploratory voyage of Arthur Barlowe and Philip Amadas in 1584 and ending with John White’s tragic attempt in 1590 to re-connect with the settlement he as governor had been forced to leave three years earlier to address in London the settlement’s need for relocation and its shortage of food and supplies.

Horn introduces us to the local Native American culture. He narrates effectively the arrogance and brutality of Captain Richard Grenville and Governor Ralph Lane and the eventual recognition by tribal leaders that these foreigners and their men are not gods nor allies but avaricious enemies. We see the measures taken by the Secotan Indians to rid themselves of these Englishmen, and we witness Governor Lane’s vicious retaliation. We feel artist-turned-idealistic governor John White’s frustration and anguish as he attempts to plant a new colony after Lane and his soldiers return to England. We recognize White’s need to return to London to arrange for additional settlers and supplies to be transported to Roanoke to enable the settlement to move to a safer geographic location. We learn why three years elapse before he is able to return. We see the little evidence he finds that leads him to believe where the people of his abandoned village have relocated. We feel his despair as he is prevented the opportunity to verify his supposition. We then judge the validity of the author’s theory of the fate of White’s “lost” colony.

Another excellent source about Roanoke is Michael Leroy Oberg's "The Head in Edward Nugent's Hand." Here is a brief excerpt from my goodreads review.

What is unique about Oberg’s book is his detailed explanation of why the native coastal populations were resistant to English encroachment. In his epilogue, he writes: “We know that many factors contributed to the failure of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke ventures. … All these explanations … overlook an important and fundamental truth: Raleigh’s Roanoke ventures failed because those native people in Ossomocomuck who initially had welcomed the newcomers decided to withdraw their support and assistance from strange people whom they now viewed as a mortal threat to their way of life.”

The Head in Edward Nugent's Hand: Roanoke's Forgotten Indians