The Struggle for Power in Colonial America, 1607–1776 PDF
Preview The Struggle for Power in Colonial America, 1607–1776
The Struggle for Power in Colonial America, 1607–1776 The Struggle for Power in Colonial America, 1607–1776 By William Nester LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2017 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-4985-6595-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4985-6596-7 (electronic) ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction ix PART I: ENDS AND ORIGINS 1 1 Power 3 2 Imperialism 39 3 Jamestown 53 4 Plymouth 73 PART II: SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 87 5 Developments 89 6 Wars 131 PART III: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 157 7 Developments 159 8 Wars 195 PART IV: TURNING POINTS 213 9 Conquests 215 10 Resistance 255 v vi Contents 11 Liberty 283 Bibliography 301 Index 333 About the Author 359 Acknowledgments I have rarely experienced a publishing team as nice, swift, and efficient as that at Lexington books. It was my pleasure to have interacted with acquisitions editor Brian Hill, assistant editor Eric Kuntzman, project manager Vaishnavi Ganesh, and assistant production editor Paula Williamson, and I am espe- cially grateful to Vaishvedhidha and the team at Deanta for finding the correct accents for the French and Spanish names. vii Introduction “History is the memory of time.” (Captain John Smith)1 Aristotle famously said that we are all political animals. To that must be added that we are all creatures of power. Politics and power are inseparable. Politics happens when individuals or groups are in conflict and includes how each side wields power to defend or enhance its interests in that conflict. One is powerful to the degree that one gets what one wants. Just how that is done depends on how one asserts the means at one’s disposal against that of others who want the same thing. The art of power has three vital ingredients. “Hard” power is physical; it is figuratively or literally in your hands like armies, navies, industries, institutions, money, and weapons. “Soft power” is psychological; it is in your head like leadership, plans, values, morale, and will. “Smart power” involves mobilizing, developing, and wielding the appropriate array of hard and soft power assets for prevailing in a struggle. For those individuals and groups that have mastered the art, power is at once a means and an end; power is deployed in ways to get what is immediately sought along with more power to make the next assertion less difficult. Then there is unintended power. The most stunning example for America’s colonial era is the decimation of native peoples by the germs that Europeans unwittingly carried with them to the New World. The fate of those early colonies would have differed drastically had the settlers faced tribal popula- tions anywhere from two to ten times more numerous than the ones they eventually conquered. Another example is expressed by the notion “too big to fail,” when the bankruptcy of a country or corporation triggers a domino effect of linked failures. The British government’s decision that the East India ix
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