TABLE OF CONTENTS
About the Author
Catherine Denial is an Associate Professor of History at Knox College in Galesburg, IL. Since 2000, she has worked on curriculum development in Iowa through Bringing History Home, a TAH grant-funded project.
Labor and Trade in Colonial America
Secondary Sources
Brown, Kathleen M. Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America. New Haven: Yale UP, 2011. Brown's book examines the history of early America through colonial bodies, and the work that it took to keep them clean and free of disease. This work was overwhelmingly women's work, and Brown argues that it had deep social, political, and spiritual implications for society as a whole.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. The Jamestown Project. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2007. Many of the men who founded Jamestown were, Kupperman argues, global citizens—individuals who carried to Virginia their experiences as traders, sailors, and explorers in other parts of the world. For the first 10 years of Jamestown's existence, the colonists experienced crisis after crisis. This was, Kupperman asserts, to be expected from individuals figuring out the best way in which to create and sustain a colony given the multitude of different experiences they possessed.
Landsman, Ned C. Crossroads of Empire: The Middle Colonies in British North America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2010. While settled by different people for different political, social, and religious ends, the regions that became New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania gradually developed a common economic and cultural outlook, argues Ned Landsman. That outlook was created and refined by trade relationships, philosophical debates, and relations (both violent and peaceful) with local Native communities.
Main, Gloria L. Peoples of a Spacious Land: Families and Cultures in Colonial New England. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001. In this book, Main explores the meaning of family for Native communities and English colonists in New England to determine how families functioned, changed, and interacted over time. Main also compares these family structures to those in England, providing a point of comparison for what changed for colonists, and what didn't.
Richter, Daniel K. Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2011. America's history did not begin with the arrival of European colonists. In this book, Daniel Richter explores centuries of pre-contact history, before charting the ways in which Europeans and Native people met, understood each other, responded to challenges, and weathered change.