Author: Manchester (Mass.)Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Manchester (Mass.)
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
Vital Records of Manchester, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849
Author: Manchester (Mass.)Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Manchester (Mass.)
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
Town Born
Author: Barry LevyPublisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812202619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361
Book Description
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, British colonists found the New World full of resources. With land readily available but workers in short supply, settlers developed coercive forms of labor—indentured servitude and chattel slavery—in order to produce staple export crops like rice, wheat, and tobacco. This brutal labor regime became common throughout most of the colonies. An important exception was New England, where settlers and their descendants did most work themselves. In Town Born, Barry Levy shows that New England's distinctive and far more egalitarian order was due neither to the colonists' peasant traditionalism nor to the region's inhospitable environment. Instead, New England's labor system and relative equality were every bit a consequence of its innovative system of governance, which placed nearly all land under the control of several hundred self-governing town meetings. As Levy shows, these town meetings were not simply sites of empty democratic rituals but were used to organize, force, and reconcile laborers, families, and entrepreneurs into profitable export economies. The town meetings protected the value of local labor by persistently excluding outsiders and privileging the town born. The town-centered political economy of New England created a large region in which labor earned respect, relative equity ruled, workers exercised political power despite doing the most arduous tasks, and the burdens of work were absorbed by citizens themselves. In a closely observed and well-researched narrative, Town Born reveals how this social order helped create the foundation for American society.
Public Documents of Massachusetts
Author: MassachusettsPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Massachusetts
Languages : en
Pages : 2562
Book Description
A Finding List of Genealogies and Town and Local Histories Containing Family Records, in the Public Library of the City of Boston
Author: Boston Public LibraryPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Genealogy
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
The town proprietors of the New England Colonies: a study of their...
Author: Roy Hidemichi AkagiA Guide to Massachusetts Local History
Author: Charles Allcott FlaggPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cities and towns
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
The Town Proprietors of the New England Colonies
Author: Roy Hidemichi AkagiPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 374
Book Description
Public Documents of Massachusetts
Author: MassachusettsAn Index-catalogue of Books in the Department of Local History and Genealogy
Author: Grosvenor LibraryPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 82
Book Description
A Rabble in Arms
Author: Kyle F. ZelnerPublisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814797342
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Book Description
While it lasted only sixteen months, King Philip’s War (1675-1676) was arguably one of the most significant of the colonial wars that wracked early America. As the first major military crisis to directly strike one of the Empire’s most important possessions: the Massachusetts Bay Colony, King Philip’s War marked the first time that Massachusetts had to mobilize mass numbers of ordinary, local men to fight. In this exhaustive social history and community study of Essex County, Massachusetts’s militia, Kyle F. Zelner boldly challenges traditional interpretations of who was called to serve during this period. Drawing on muster and pay lists as well as countless historical records, Zelner demonstrates that Essex County’s more upstanding citizens were often spared from impressments, while the “rabble” — criminals, drunkards, the poor— were forced to join active fighting units, with town militia committees selecting soldiers who would be least missed should they die in action. Enhanced by illustrations and maps, A Rabble in Arms shows that, despite heroic illusions of a universal military obligation, town fathers, to damaging effects, often placed local and personal interests above colonial military concerns.