Ranging over all stages and aspects of New York colonial life, this
study by the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning People of Paradox
(1972) finds a new array of dualities. The New York Dutch were
"delicate and blunt, cosmopolitan yet parochial"; British rule
showed "authoritarian permissiveness"; the French and Indian War
was waged with "savagery and gentility." Kammen identifies special
characteristics of New York: bilingualism and materialism
unqualified by spiritual aspirations or patrician glosses - thus
"the relative boorishness of New York's society and the vapidity of
its cultural life." Land was also scarce, being in the hands of
speculators, and political life was unstable and faction-ridden,
too much so for Kammen's taste - he laments that "urbanization and
expansion had made it difficult indeed to achieve any semblance of
community." However under the grey rubric of "economic growth and
problems of intergroup relations," the book presents a new view of
trade: English exports were largely European goods, and "the
notorious navigation system did not protect British manufactures so
much as it sheltered an extensive re-export trade." Kammen's
penchant for paradoxes is well-suited to the coming of the
Revolution to New York, whose inhabitants protested British policy
even as they backed off from independence. There is no lack of
period flavor, what with wild turkeys and rebellions and one royal
governor who used to dress up like his cousin, Queen Anne. Kammen's
excellent material is accompanied by an extensive bibliography. An
entry in the History of the American Colonies series. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Despite its importance, New York has attracted very few historians of its colonial period. Michael Kammen offers a clear, comprehensive study of this previously neglected century by making skilful use of primary and secondary sources, his remarkable familiarity with the terrain on which the drama was enacted, and those physical remains that remind us of that past.
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