William A. Pencak - Historical Dictionary of Colonial America

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Editors Foreword

Looking back on it, the colonial era may seem deceptively simple and straightforward, especially from a distance of several centuries. As they taught us in school, a new continent was discovered in the form of America, it was colonized by sturdy settlers, and the frontier was rolled back creating what has become the worlds mightiest power. And this is true as far as it goes, barring the messy details. The land was coveted by several empires, mainly the British, French, and Spanish, but also the Dutch, the Portuguese, and even the Swedes. The colonists had even more origins than that, coming from all corners of Europe. And they imported slaves from Africa. Alas, there were already inhabitants when they arrived, namely what were then loosely called Indians, and there was relatively little concern about what happened to them. There were, indeed, the original thirteen colonies, but these were sometimes royal and sometimes proprietary, and even they were splintered by rivalries among immigrants of different sources, social classes, economic status, and especially religious convictions, as well as quite ordinary quarrels over land, money, and power. What became the United States was hardly united at that time, and the situation was often muddled, to say the least.

This gives special significance to the Historical Dictionary of Colonial America , which covers the period from the arrival of the first immigrants in 1607and actually long before, since it is necessary to see the broader contextand follows this for a century and a half to about 1763, when the revolutionary period begins. For those who only have vague memories of what they did learn in school, this may be quite unsettling as the picture is much more variegated, even confusing, and the colonists no longer look quite so good. This can already be sensed in the chronology by the reference to numerous wars and conflicts even before the revolution. But the introduction is crucial in sorting out the divisions and conflicts and providing the general background. Next the dictionary section fills in the details, whether fairly straightforward historical ones or messier aspects that involve ethics and morality. These focus on the more prominent persons, places, institutions, and events, this including the wars and lesser conflicts. There are also entries that deal with the major colonial empires and some, particularly interesting, that give a feel for the times, such as the economy and trade or family and religion. Those wishing to take their studies further can turn to the bibliography, which is very extensive and where the titles are carefully organized by topics, making it extremely useful and easy to navigate.

It would be hard to find a more suitable author for this volume than William A. Pencak. For the past 35 years, he has been teaching American history, with an emphasis on the colonial period, this mainly at Penn State University, where he is professor of history, but at other outstanding schools as well. He has written and edited numerous books and articles in the field and was the founding editor of Explorations in Early American Culture , the journal that is now Early American Studies , of the McNeil Center in Philadelphia. With such a guide, it will be much easier for readers to understand what really was a rather complicated and sometimes confusing period that led up to the formation of the United States out of anything but united colonies.