68 pages • 2 hours read
Alan TaylorAmerican Colonies: The Settling of North America
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaIntroduction-Part 1, Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1
Introduction Summary
In the Introduction, Alan Taylor argues that previous histories of the American colonies were oversimplified because they concentrated exclusively on English colonies and the English white male experience. This Anglocentric narrative is attractive to academics and the public alike because it offers “an appealing simplification that contains important (but partial) truths” (x). But such histories exclude the “losers” of the colonial process: native peoples (whom Taylor broadly refers to as Indians), slaves, poor white men and women, and England’s imperial rivals, France, Spain, and the Netherlands.
The colonial “winners” tended to be middling (roughly equivalent to middle class) or wealthy white men. Their success depended on the capitalistic seizure of land and exploitation of others’ labor. But their power, and European power more broadly, was not absolute. The colonizers had to adapt to each other, the Indians, and the Africans—and vice versa. The unique factor in the American colonies, Taylor contends, was this unprecedented mixing of peoples, which led to a composite culture and “the true measure of American distinctiveness, the true foundation for the diverse America of our time” (xii).
The distinctions between these groups were not always what they are now. In the 16th and early 17th centuries, the inclination was to sort people based on culture (i.e., English versus Spanish, Protestant versus Catholic), not race. It was possible, if unlikely, for Indians and Africans to enter the lower social classes if they adopted European culture (xii). But because the colonial elite used lower-class white men to control Indians and slaves, they in turn needed to give rights to men, cultivating a new concept of racial solidarity. This is, Taylor argues, is the uncomfortable truth of the American dream: “white racial solidarity developed in close tandem with the expansion of liberty” (xiii).
Chapter 1 Summary: “Natives: 13,000 BC-AD 1492”
Chapter 1 surveys the history of the Indians before the Europeans’ arrival in the 15th century. Indians likely descended from a few hundred ancestors who crossed into North America from Siberia via land or ice bridge between 15,000 and 12,000 years ago (5-6). These early settlers, the Paleo-Indians, were small bands of nomadic hunters. They had no permanent settlements, being highly mobile in the pursuit of big game (8).
Climatic change and highly skilled hunters resulted in the extinction of two-thirds of large game species, driving cultural and technological innovation. Native peoples, now in the Archaic period, relied more heavily on local resources, settling in semipermanent villages and developing more advanced weapons (such as the atalatl). Taylor notes how gender structured work roles, a topic he will return to repeatedly. The success of these permanent settlements encouraged the development of distinct cultures, with a thriving trade network of inventions and ideas extending across the continent (10).
Horticulture is developed by some groups. Between approximately 300 and 1100 AD, southwestern cultural groups like the Anasazi and Hohokam thrived by propagating maize, watered by elaborate irrigation systems (12). In Mississippi, Indians largely remained hunter-gatherers until 800 AD, when they adopted farming to great success. However, the great Mississippian chiefdom called Cahokia declined in the 12th century, at the same time as the settlements of the Anasazi and the Hohokum, largely due to the same factors: depletion of natural resources and overpopulation (16). Taylor uses these three narratives to explain how Indian population sizes tended to self-regulate. While larger communities failed due to environmental strain, other native peoples lived in smaller mobile bands, which demanded less of nature (17).
Taylor introduces a second factor differentiating Indians from Europeans: Indians did little enduring harm to the local environment because they believed that spirits reside in everything (animism), which in turn demanded balance between the natural and supernatural worlds (18-19). Europeans, on the other hand, were anthropocentric, or centered on people. They believed Christians had a divine charge to dominate nature. This ethos “rendered it supernaturally safe for Europeans to harvest all the resources that they wanted” (20). Capitalism naturally developed from this ethos. While some Europeans recognized the destructive effects of capitalism and the positives offered by Indian culture, they ultimately remained committed to their own way of life (21-22).
Introduction-Part 1, Chapter 1 Analysis
The Introduction covers Taylor’s approach to writing his book and his historiographical methods. He is especially interested in challenging American exceptionalism, the idea that the United States was uniquely built on republicanism and liberty, which equated to an “uplift” for all people.
This style of historical methodology rejects a mode of thinking called teleology. Teleology presents a narrative in which each event is seen as following a straight-arrow course, neatly leading up to a foregone conclusion. It is, in effect, projecting inevitability back onto history. Taylor leans more closely to teleology’s corrective, contingency. Contingency gets at how people made decisions in the moment, with the knowledge and goals they had at the time, and how historical events and trends arose from their actions. No given outcome was preordained; colonial America was an incredibly complex and interconnected place, where changing a single prior condition could have changed the outcome of history.
Taylor writes conscientiously, occasionally interrupting his narrative to inject caveats or asides to the reader. One notable incursion is his deference to how native peoples self-identify, when he encourages the reader to “bear in mind that many contemporary native peoples entirely reject the scholarly explanations for their origins, preferring instead their own traditions that they emerged in the Americas and so literally belong to this land” (3). This attitude is in keeping with the book’s aim to present the native perspective. It also reflects a broader movement to consult marginalized peoples in the telling their stories. Chapter 1 is itself a striking statement to the native-oriented viewpoint of Taylor’s work. By presenting the history of the Indians before European settlers arrived, he argues that the story of the Americas began long before Europeans even conceived of transatlantic travel.
But Taylor’s consideration for native culture should not imply that he romanticizes the Indians. He seeks instead to find the middle ground between the romantics, who painted Indians as peaceful, ecologically minded saints, and conservative historians, who argued that Indians were warlike savages who deserved to be conquered. He writes, “It would be difficult (and pointless) to make the case that either the Indians or the Europeans of the early modern era were by nature or culture more violent and ‘cruel’ than the other,” but he concedes that “we should recognize [the] Europeans’ superior power to inflict misery” (4).
Chapter 1 functions as a blank slate, a picture of native society before the Europeans arrived. While Indian cultural groups were incredibly varied, there were also shared mainstays of native thought (e.g., animism). A baseline understanding of those beliefs will allow us to more strongly contrast Indian customs with the European ways described in subsequent chapters.
