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The Great Valley Road of Virginia chronicles the story of one of America's oldest, most historic, and most geographically significant roads. Emphasized throughout the chapters is a concern for landscape character and the connection of the land to the people who traveled the road and to permanent residents, who depended upon it for their livelihoods. Also included are chapters about the towns supported by the road as well as the relationship of physical geography (the lay of the land) to the engineering of the road. More than one hundred maps, photographs, engravings, and line drawings enhance the book's value to scholars and general readers alike. Published in association with the Center for American Places
This collection of essays written by prestigious Washington scholars examines the role that geography and the diverse inhabitants of this frontier play in molding Washington's life, temperament, and politics.
An important addition to scholarship of the geography and history of colonial and early America, The Planting of New Virginia, rethinks American history and the evolution of the American landscape in the colonial era.
The Seven Years' War (1754–1763) was a pivotal event in the history of the Atlantic world. Perspectives on the significance of the war and its aftermath varied considerably from different cultural vantage points. Northern and western Indians, European imperial authorities, and their colonial counterparts understood and experienced the war (known in the United States as the French and Indian War) in various ways. In many instances the progress of the conflict was charted by cultural differences and the implications participants drew from cultural encounters. It is these cultural encounters, their meaning in the context of the Seven Years' War, and their impact on the war and its diplomatic ...
In Ulster to America: The Scots-Irish Migration Experience, 1680–1830, editor Warren R. Hofstra has gathered contributions from pioneering scholars who are rewriting the history of the Scots-Irish. In addition to presenting fresh information based on thorough and detailed research, they offer cutting-edge interpretations that help explain the Scots-Irish experience in the United States. In place of implacable Scots-Irish individualism, the writers stress the urge to build communities among Ulster immigrants. In place of rootlessness and isolation, the authors point to the trans-Atlantic continuity of Scots-Irish settlement and the presence of Germans and Anglo-Americans in so-called Scots-...
Colin Calloway offers an intricate portrait of the early American settlers who came to be known as Scotch-Irish -- from their origins on borderlands on one side of the Atlantic to their crucial part in conquering borderlands on the other. "Hard neighbors," as they were called, the Scotch-Irish were the tip of the spear of white colonial expansion into Indian lands, earning a reputation first as Indian killers and then as embodiments of the American pioneer spirit.
For western colonists in the early American backcountry, disputes often ended in bloodshed and death. Making the Frontier Man examines early life and the origins of lawless behavior in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio from 1750 to 1815. It provides a key to understanding why the trans-Appalachian West was prone to violent struggles, especially between white men. Traumatic experiences of the Revolution and the Forty Years War legitimized killing as a means of self-defense—of property, reputation, and rights—transferring power from the county courts to the ordinary citizen. Backcountry men waged war against American Indians in state-sponsored militias as they worked to establish ...
This book brings a variety of fresh perspectives to bear on the diverse people and settlements of the eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century southern backcountry. Reflecting the growth of interdisciplinary studies in addressing the backcountry, the volume specifically points to the use of history, archaeology, geography, and material culture studies in examining communities on the southern frontier. Through a series of case studies and overviews, the contributors use cross-disciplinary analysis to look at community formation and maintenance in the backcountry areas of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. These essays demonstrate how various combinations of research stra...
Even as the 250th anniversary of its outbreak approaches, the Seven Years' War (otherwise known as the French and Indian War) is still not wholly understood. Most accounts tell the story as a military struggle between British and French forces, with shifting alliances of Indians, culminating in the British conquest of Canada. Scholarly and popular works alike, including James Fennimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans, focus on the action in the Hudson River Valley and the St. Lawrence Seaway. Matthew C. Ward tells the compelling story of the war from the point of view of the region where it actually began, and whose people felt the devastating effects of war most keenly-the backcountry communi...
"On the morning of 26 April 1607, three small ships carrying 143 Englishmen arrived off the Virginia coast of North America, having spent four months at sea.... All hoped for financial success and perhaps a little adventure; as it turned out, their tiny settlement eventually would evolve from colony into a prominent state in an entirely new nation." So begins Old Dominion, New Commonwealth: A History of Virginia, 1607-2007 and the remarkable story behind the founding not only of the state of Virginia but of our nation. With this book, the historians Ronald L. Heinemann, John G. Kolp, Anthony S. Parent Jr., and William G. Shade collaborate to provide a comprehensive, accessible, one-volume hi...