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  • Published: 15 August 2013
  • ISBN: 9780375703461
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 640
  • RRP: $45.00

The Barbarous Years

The Peopling of British North America--The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675



The immigrants were a mixed multitude. They came from England, the Netherlands, German and Italian states, France, Africa, Sweden, and Finland. They moved to the western hemisphere for different reasons, from different social backgrounds and cultures. They represented a spectrum of religious attachments. In the early years, their stories are not mainly ones of triumph but of confusion, failure, violence, and the loss of civility as they sought to normalize situations and recapture lost worlds. It was a thoroughly brutal encounter--not only between the Europeans and native peoples and between Europeans and Africans, but among Europeans themselves, as they sought to control and prosper in the new configurations of life that were emerging around them.

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

A compelling, fresh account of the first great transit of people from Britain, Europe, and Africa to British North America, their involvements with each other, and their struggles with the indigenous peoples of the eastern seaboard.

The immigrants were a mixed multitude. They came from England, the Netherlands, the German and Italian states, France, Africa, Sweden, and Finland, and they moved to the western hemisphere for different reasons, from different social backgrounds and cultures. They represented a spectrum of religious attachments. In the early years, their stories are not mainly of triumph but of confusion, failure, violence, and the loss of civility as they sought to normalize situations and recapture lost worlds. It was a thoroughly brutal encounter—not only between the Europeans and native peoples and between Europeans and Africans, but among Europeans themselves, as they sought to control and prosper in the new configurations of life that were emerging around them.

  • Published: 15 August 2013
  • ISBN: 9780375703461
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 640
  • RRP: $45.00

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Praise for The Barbarous Years

  • "Simply magisterial: sweeping, authoritative, commanding. . . ." --Christian Science Monitor
  • "Eloquent and highly readable . . . . This is the essential history of the founding of what would become the original United States." --The Dallas Morning News