Surveying

I recently finished reading Alan Taylor’s American Colonies. It’s a good general overview of the colonial history of what would become the United States, and as such covers considerably more ground than a traditional history of colonial America, including New Mexico, Florida, Louisiana, California, Alaska and Hawaii as well as the thirteen British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard that became the original thirteen states, along with chapters on places that didn’t become part of the US but were nonetheless important for the development of the colonies that did (e.g., Canada, Mexico and the West Indies). The organization of the book is broadly chronological, with individual chapters being either geographical or thematic in focus. This results in most time periods being covered several times from different perspectives, which is useful for understanding the development of individual colonies.

I found this an easy read and a good introduction to the parts of colonial history that I didn’t know much about (particularly the eighteenth century). I think I might have enjoyed it more if I had read it before some of the other books that I’ve read recently, since having read more detailed histories of some of the colonies meant I didn’t get much out of the chapters on them. There are also some odd errors that were a bit distracting; for example, while the name of the Spanish settlement of San Agustín is spelled correctly in the account of its founding, when it is discussed in later chapters it is generally spelled “San Agústin” (in one place even “San Augústin”), and while this is presumably a typesetting error rather than anything attributable to the author or editor it is distracting all the same.  Also, Kiowa is not a Uto-Aztecan language.  These and other errors are all very minor and pretty much inevitable in a work of this scale, of course.

One of the best things about this book is its bibliography, which is organized by chapter rather than as an alphabetical list.  This makes it much easier to locate works for further reading on any given topic, and is particularly useful for my purposes.

In sum, this is a very good book, and a solid, accessible introduction to a very complicated subject.  I would recommend it to anyone interested in colonial America who hasn’t read much about the subject and wants a concise, readable summary of recent scholarship in the field.