THE AMERICAN COLONIES: From Settlement to Independence

A compact, intelligent survey of the English colonies in what became the US, the settlements that preceded them, and the revolutionary institutions of the states that succeeded them. Stressing differences among and within the regions, Simmons, a University of Birmingham historian, finds at the same time a surprising continuity of 17th-century colonial policy on the British end, from Cromwell to the Oranges. Britain's early 18th-century wars stimulated New World trade and shipping, he emphasizes, but claims (despite a pre-Revolutionary iron output greater than that of England and Wales) that ""The colonies developed no appreciable industries"" of their own. The book generally gives a nice balance of ""material"" and ""ideological"" influences; for example, Congregationalism (Simmons' more neutral and precise rubric for Puritanism) and colonial government structures are approached in terms of philosophies as well as socio-economic roots, without reductionism. ""The system, after all, survived and worked for more than a century of rapidly rising population, warfare, and the expansion of settlement."" But when the British decided after the Seven Years' War that they must either go bankrupt or ""lay fresh taxes in cold blood"" on the colonies, the game was up--one decisive element being, Simmons insists, the consumption of Paine's Common Sense by as many as one out of every three adult white males. Not rousing but clear, reasonable, and useful.