I’ve owned this book for quite a few years, even started it and then abandoned it a few times because I wasn’t quite in the mood for it. This time I persevered, and I’m glad that I did.
As noted by the title, the subject of the book is American Colonies. However, to be clear, it not just USA colonies, but colonies for all of the Americas, both North and South. It’s also not a history of the American Revolutionary War. It’s mostly pre Revolutionary War history, starting in the BC era when travelers migrated from modern day Russia to the North American continent during the ice age, when ocean levels were low and there was a land bridge the travelers could use. The book ends in the 1800’s with colonization of the West and the Pacific. But, most of the book concerns pre-American Revolutionary War history.
Different readers will extract different learnings from the book. Edmund Wilson writes “no two persons ever read the same book” and that will be true here, because of the depth and breadth of material that the author provides.
(I’ve seen this quote by Wilson several times, and a little bit of research says that it might be mis-represented. The actual quote is apparently “In a sense, one can never read the book that the author originally wrote, and one can never read the same book twice” and is found in his book “The Triple Thinkers“)
I did take some detailed notes while reading, and the overarching theme for me is how economic behavior drives imperialism, colonialism, and expansionism, and sometimes with disastrous results for the host country.
I’ll provide just a couple of examples to illustrate what I’m talking about, but if the subject matter is of interest, you might want to find a copy from your favorite bookseller or library.
First Example on page 211 Taylor writes “Because real wages rose in England after 1650″…….I then extracted the following examples of the economic effects by reading later pages
- People tended to stay in England instead of risking their lives in an uncertain economy such as cultivating sugar in the West Indies
- Those who DID decide to emigrate preferred the mainland colonies OR the less crowded developing islands (Jamaica and Antigua) because they still offered land grants to settlers
- The West Indies thus became desperate for workers. They accepted growing numbers of convicted criminals and political prisoners.
Second Example on page 439 Taylor writes–referring to the East coast colonies in the 1760’s, such as Virginia, Massachusetts, and so on “a free man paid no taxes, unless levied by his own representatives”. To me this means that the colonists no longer thought of themselves as British citizens, or expats, and thus found it difficult to accept the notion of paying taxes to the Crown to finance continued British expansionism. This would seem to be an important seed for the American Revolution.
Those of you interested in social issues, political issues, military history, trade alliances, and a host of other subjects will find plenty of material to keep you busy.
Wikipedia says that this book is “Volume 1.” It was originally published in 2001, so I’m not really sure when or if Volume 2 was ever published. I wasn’t able to find out anything about it.