Colonial America
In 1497 John Cabot sailed from Bristol, England on commission "to
seek out ...regions ...of the heathen." He made a landing in Canada, laid claim to the
region and hurried home. There the delighted king rewarded him with 50 pounds "to have a
good time with". This was England's first meeting of the new world.
Then one day in December of 1606, a little over a hundred Englishmen crowded onto three small
ships, the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery.They set sail from London for
what one of the men hopefully called "Virginia, Earth's only paradise". This became known as the
colony of Jamestown. From that moment on emmigration to the shores of North America has never
ceased.
From the beginning, the British Empire's behaviour toward the colonies was an extraordinary
paradox. To the settlers along the North Atlantic seaboard it generously granted home rule, but
did everything to avoid their excercising it. It considered the colonists Englishmen, but
denied them the same basic rights. Among other things, the taxing of the colonists, without any
representation, fueled the eventual break with England.
In 1775, on the eve of the American Revolution, 2.5 million people had a personal stake in the
13 colonies - roughly a third of what inhabited all of Great Britain. By 1776 the time for a
complete break from England had come. On June 7, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia put before the
Continental Congress the momentous resolution calling for a Declaration of
Independence, foreign alliances, and a confederation of the American states
Among the best-known men in the colonies were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams,
Patrick Henry, and John Hancock. One of the most famous was Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia,
who was a runaway printer's apprentice - and thus a law breaker - at the age of 17. He was a
newspaper owner when he was 24 and a rich (and retired) commercial printer by the time he was
42. A business man, public servant, statesman, and inventor, Franklin's greatest achievment was
in proving, by his own life and example, that a man humbly born in colonial America could become
the equal of anyone, anywhere.
- 18th Century Literature
and Culture
- Jamestown Archeology Site
- From Revolution to Reconstruction
(George M. Welling) -- A large hypertextual archive of information, especially
primary documents, on American history, with strong coverage of the colonial
and revolutionary periods.
- The Avalon Project:
18th Century Documents (Yale Law) -- Extensive archive of American
historical documents.
- Early
American Documents (Emory) -- High-resolution (and therefore large)
facsimiles of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence (including
Jefferson's draft), and Bill of Rights.
- Archiving Early America -- Includes
the Keigwin and Matthews collection of historic newspapers.
- Society of Early
Americanists (Irvine) -- Information on the Society, with links to
E-texts, information on teaching, dissertations, recent and forthcoming
publications, and other Web resources.
- Omohundro Institute of Early
American History & Culture -- Information on the Institute and
its events and publications, including William and Mary Quarterly.
- Performing
Arts in Colonial American Newspapers, 1690-1783 -- Description of
CD-ROM.
- The Leslie Brock
Center for the Study of Colonial Currency (Virginia) -- Useful primary
and secondary documents on early American currency.
- The Early America Review
-- Contents and texts of the print journal.
- The collection of eighteenth-century
exhibitions at the Library of Congress -- Nearly two dozen exhibitions
on early America.
- White Oak Society -- A "living-history"
guide to the 18th-c. fur trade.
- Fire Island
National Seashore (SUNY Stony Brook) -- Guide to the William Floyd
Estate, an 18th-c. house of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
-
MAPS
MILITARY HISTORY
- United
States Naval History: A Bibliography (U.S. Navy) -- "This edition
[1993] of United States Naval History: A Bibliography incorporates
more than 450 titles chosen from the large body of naval historical
literature published since the bibliography's sixth edition appeared
in 1972." Very thorough; some items annotated.
- Northwest Territory
Alliance -- "A non-profit educational organization that studies
and recreates the culture, lifestyle, and arts of the time of the
American Revolution, 1775-1783. We strive to duplicate the uniforms,
weapons, battlefield tactics and camp life of the era as accurately
as possible."
- The French and Indian War
(Digital History LTD) -- Extensive archive, although the audience
is re-enactors and amateurs rather than scholars.
- The French and Indian War
(Syracuse) -- Another thorough but unscholarly site.
SLAVERY
- DPLS Archive:
Slave Movement During the 18th and 19th Centuries (Wisconsin)
-- "This site provides access to the raw data and documentation which
contains information on the following slave trade topics from the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: records of slave ship movement
between Africa and the Americas, slave ships of eighteenth century
France, slave trade to Rio de Janeiro, Virginia slave trade in the
eighteenth century, English slave trade (House of Lords Survey), Angola
slave trade in the eighteenth century, internal slave trade to Rio
de Janeiro, slave trade to Havana, Cuba, Nantes slave trade in the
eighteenth century, and slave trade to Jamaica."
- Slave Narratives
(Steven Mintz, Univ. of Houston) -- Seventeenth- through nineteenth-century
accounts of slavery.
THE COLONIES
HISTORICAL FIGURES
- Ethan Allen: The
Best of Ethan Allen (John W. Krueger, AOL) -- Full text of the
book, "a representative selection of brief excerpts from Allen's published
books, pamphlets, and broadsides."
- Benjamin Franklin:
- Thomas Jefferson:
- James Madison: Papers of
James Madison (Virginia) -- Short biography, bibliography, and
discussion of the publication project.
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