The colonists who settled the backcountry in eighteenth-century New England were recruited from the social fringe, people who were desperate for land, autonomy, and respectability and who were willing to make a hard living in a rugged environment.
Mark Williams' microhistorical approach gives voice to the settlers, proprietors, and officials of the small colonial settlements that became Granby, Connecticut, and Ashfield, Massachusetts. These people-often disrespectful, disorderly, presumptuous, insistent, and defiant-were drawn to the ideology of the Revolution in the 1760s and 1770s that stressed equality, independence, and property rights. The backcountry settlers pushed the emerging nation's political culture in a more radical direction than many of their leaders or the Founding Fathers preferred and helped put a democratic imprint on the new nation. This accessibly written book will resonate with all those interested in the social and political relationships of early America.
- ISBN10 6612352027
- ISBN13 9786612352027
- Publish Date 25 August 2009 (first published 1 January 2009)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 27 September 2011
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Yale University Press
- Format eBook
- Pages 265
- Language English