Abraham in Arms War and Gender in Colonial New England Ann M.
Little "This innovative and thought-provoking analysis of why New
Englanders and Indians went to war, and how they interpreted their
experiences in war, effectively reshapes our perspectives of
culture and society on the early New England frontier."--"Journal
of American History" "A clearly written, cogently argued book on
early American cultural encounters. Highly recommended."--"Choice"
"A creative and fascinating tour-de-force. Sweeping across two
centuries of conflict in the colonial Northeast, from the Pequot
War of 1636-37 to the Seven Years' War of the mid-eighteenth
century, Little shows how northeastern Native peoples, English
colonists, and French settlers interpreted each other's actions
through the lens of their own gendered sense of proper social
order. The book makes a very persuasive case for gender being
central to any study of war that historians might undertake, and
the writing flows elegantly from insight to insight."--Nancy
Shoemaker, University of Connecticut In 1678, the Puritan minister
Samuel Nowell preached a sermon he called "Abraham in Arms," in
which he urged his listeners to remember that "Hence it is no wayes
unbecoming a Christian to learn to be a Souldier." The title of
Nowell's sermon was well chosen. Abraham of the Old Testament
resonated deeply with New England men, as he embodied the ideal of
the householder-patriarch, at once obedient to God and the
unquestioned leader of his family and his people in war and peace.
Yet enemies challenged Abraham's authority in New England: Indians
threatened the safety of his household, subordinates in his own
family threatened his status, and wives and daughters taken into
captivity became baptized Catholics, married French or Indian men,
and refused to return to New England. In a bold reinterpretation of
the years between 1620 and 1763, Ann M. Little reveals how ideas
about gender and family life were central to the ways people in
colonial New England, and their neighbors in New France and Indian
Country, described their experiences in cross-cultural warfare.
Little argues that English, French, and Indian people had broadly
similar ideas about gender and authority. Because they understood
both warfare and political power to be intertwined expressions of
manhood, colonial warfare may be understood as a contest of
different styles of masculinity. For New England men, what had once
been a masculinity based on household headship, Christian piety,
and the duty to protect family and faith became one built around
the more abstract notions of British nationalism, anti-Catholicism,
and soldiering for the Empire. Based on archival research in both
French and English sources, court records, captivity narratives,
and the private correspondence of ministers and war officials,
"Abraham in Arms" reconstructs colonial New England as a frontier
borderland in which religious, cultural, linguistic, and geographic
boundaries were permeable, fragile, and contested by Europeans and
Indians alike. Ann M. Little is Associate Professor of History at
Colorado State University. Early American Studies 2006 272 pages 6
x 9 17 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-1961-6 Paper $24.95s 16.50 ISBN
978-0-8122-0264-9 Ebook $24.95s 16.50 World Rights American History
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