9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The making of the English Atlanic world, September 25, 2002
A scholarly investigation into the Atlantic voyages and destinations of those listed in the 1635 London Port Register. The author follows their careers in the extant colonial and English records before and after their voyages. Excellent insights into the English colonies in New England, Virginia, Bermuda, and Providence Island in the Caribbean.
Questions of why these travelers left, how they traveled, what they found when they arrived, how they prospered or failed, and those that returned to their homeland or traveled to other colonies are all dealt with. Excellent sections on the age and sex compositions of the different destinations under study and the effects of this on their colonial development.
Lots of information on the flight of the puritans from Archbishop Laud and the different gathered church societies they established in the puritan colonies. The continuous migration over the life cycle of these English travelers within England, to London, across the Atlantic and within and between colonies is the ongoing theme of the book.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
outstanding work of original research, November 11, 2001
By A Customer
This book by Alison Games, based on her PhD dissertation if I am to understand correctly, is an outstanding piece of original research. Games successfully combines her torturous mining of the archives of the UK, Bermuda, US & elsewhere, with a good understanding of statistics, with intellectually honest speculations about the data (where it exists & where it does not, carefully showing where each hold), with a comprehension of the sweep of history in which this work fits, with a fine writing style. This book is denser than most colonial history, but it is worth pushing through that density for the unique insights the history carries with it & the stimulation of mind the book provides to the reader. Fundamentally, as Games shows, history is about ordinary human beings. The aggregation of their actions is what makes something worthy of the historians attention. In Games work, we can see the individual actions of UK "citizens" in the 1500s & 1600s in making the trek to colonies. This book should be on anyone's required reading list for understanding what happened in the British colonies early-on.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Migration and early America, May 26, 2007
A Ph.d. dissertation by Alison Games "that turned into a book," Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World introduces a novel approach to studying English Colonial history. Insisting that migration played a more significant role in early Atlantic regional and national settlements than previously thought, the author explores and amalgamates common threads to modify previous notions on the origins of English cultural norms in colonial America. Based heavily on the 1635 London Port register, the author chronicles the migration patterns of over 7500 Englishmen and women who moved to the New World.
After establishing a rather dense narrative in the introductory chapters, we learn, in depth, about the travel patterns and challenges of those who braved the Atlantic world. "A spectrum of experience," notes Games, "characterized early colonial settlements, and the intent of my approach is to delineate both the variety of colonial societies and the common processes by which they were formed." (10) The discussions of the aforementioned vignettes are dispersed successfully among several geographic regions such as New England, the Caribbean, and the Chesapeake.
The author provides extensive research of church registers, court records, and other primary sources to advance a careful argument that "common processes" of Old World travelers established the foundations of early American family life. She also correctly highlights the fact that movement between the New and Old World was hectic, and in constant motion, with migrants moving several times once they entered colonial America. The only exception to this argument, which Games downplays, is the large contingent of migrants who moved directly to New England from the Old World and settled there.
In a peripheral exploration, Games expounds on colonial Puritanism and discusses the rise of church membership in the New World. The former focuses on spiritual modifications, or simply changes, that distinguished colonial Puritans from Old World Puritans. These arguments, however, seem more suited, and appropriate, for a study of colonial religious practices and developments. The marriage that Games makes between Puritanism and migration is not explicitly clear to the reader. In fact, these arguments would contrast nicely with Barry Levy's study of Quakerism and the relationship of the modern American household.
Another distraction in this work is the overabundance of statistics that tend to bog down the reader. While useful and relevant to advancing secondary arguments, the author seems to deploy statistical evidence in way that negates her main themes about migration. Along the same lines, the work would have benefited from more research on the geographic origins, and familial ties, of travelers prior to their departure from London in 1635. The author does touch on this some, but the reader is left wondering if there was a more pronounced historical connection between familial origin in the Old World and settlement in the new World.
Nonetheless, this work provides a new paradigm, and a neglected approach, to studying early English migration and its impact on the New World. The author also provides clear evidence that travel patterns played an important, sometimes subtle and other times dramatic, impact on travelers' destiny in colonial America. The work, however, falls short of convincing the reader that migration patterns were the main historical ingredient for determining settlements in the Atlantic region. This work is most appropriate for those who have a keen understanding of colonial history and an interest in migration history.
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