HST296a, Class notes, 26-January-2005

(See online syllabus/reading notes for changes on articles to be read.)

Who are we:
Jackie: started out in European social but moved to Colonial American. Originally from Essex.

Erica - teaching
Charles
Chris - Spec. Col.
Margaret - Fleming
Caitlyn - teaching
Sam
will try to get the rest...

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A theme for course: what is daily life like?

Note: 1752: year England finally switches to modern calendar. Before that, 1st day of new year is March.

Who are non-conformists: non-Anglicans, esp. Puritans

What are some of the things they are frustrated with?

• want to have a sense of self-control
• the fact that they left must mean they wanted to establish something new
• drivers: taxing in England, land. Powell doesn;t say but "a strong belief that if England didn't straighten out Puritanically that God would punish it (ex: sport on Sunday). Anglicans - let anyone into communion and lax on church attendance
  

England: surprising diversity for such a small geographic area:

• open-field systems: communal, some specialists in various aspects of production (expert plowers, etc.) but more often "I own the plow, I'll lend it to you"
• East Anglia: highest number of men with university education (and Puritans prize that, thus they recruited from there). Also a Puritan hotbed, though of course not everyone in the area was Puritan
• market towns,
  
• church-oriented villages,
  
• myland vs. our land

Chris: Powell doesn;t seem to go into "intent" very much. Also the people he focused on didn;t seem poor or even terribly religious

So, moving to NE: Powell's thesis: First get the land, but land is used in different ways so if you come from a community that is used to the open-field system you look for that. If you come from a system that privileges land ownership you find a community like that. Settlers had to reconcile these two views.

Was Sudbury an exception to the rule in terms of other NE villages?

Sudbury was cohesive for the first 20 years (generation) then population pressure came to bear.

I wonder: Two forces that would encourage splintering:

• they believe they can proscribe behavior, so they do, except different expectations about what constitutes proper behavior will inevitably lead to difference of opinion
• they make laws on an ad hoc basis which then become insitutionalized. This incremental practice is bound to lead to conflict

Recommended books (books we could have started with):

• Fisher, David Hackett. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. ( New York : Oxford University Press, c1989) material culture, etc.
• Lockridge, Kenneth. A New England Town: The First Hundred Years, Dedham, Massachusetts. (New York: Norton, 1970).
• Demos, John.  A Little Commonwealth : Family Life in Plymouth Colony. ( Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2000.)

hope.greenberg@uvm.edu, created/updated 24-January-2005
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