The Founding of New England

This Pulitzer Prize awarded history interrogates the discovery and first settlement of the region; the genesis of the religious and political ideas which there took root and flourished; the geographic and other factors which shaped its economic development; the beginnings of that English overseas empire, of which it formed a part; and the early formulation of thought-on both sides of the Atlantic-regarding imperial problems.

Contents:

The American Background

Staking Out Claims

The Race for Empire

Some Aspects of Puritanism

The First Permanent Settlement

New England and the Great Migration

An English Opposition Becomes a New England Oligarchy

The Growth of a Frontier

Attempts to Unify New England

Cross-Currents in the Confederacy

The Defeat of the Theocracy

The Theory of Empire

The Reassertion of Imperial Control

The Inevitable Conflict

Loss of the Massachusetts Charter

An Experiment in Administration

The New Order