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The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America--The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 1st Edition

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Bernard Bailyn (Author)
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Bernard Bailyn (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars 112 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0375703461
ISBN-10: 0375703462
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 640 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; 1 edition (August 13, 2013)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0375703462
  • ISBN-13: 978-0375703461
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.3 x 9.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (112 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #113,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsabsolutely fascinating
By Stanley Crowe TOP 1000 REVIEWER on December 19, 2012
Format: Hardcover
To a reader like myself who's fairly familiar with aspects of British and Irish history but hardly at all with American history, especially early stuff, this is fascinating. I didn't know that the earliest efforts to colonize Virginia were such a disaster -- people were dying like flies over there, even as entrepreneurs sought recruits to sail to new lives in what was presented as a terrestrial paradise. The lure of land, the development of the tobacco trade, and later the fur trade, the relations with the indigenous peoples, the blending of religious and commercial motives, the context for the behavior of the natives -- Bailyn lays it all out very deftly, blending a chronological organization with a geographical one. The cases of Maryland and New England are very different from Virginia's (and each other) despite the overlap in time. The idea of colliding cultures (English and native American) that one finds in the blurb oversimplifies things. There is no single English or European culture, and the native tribes have likewise their own pressures and agendas. So it's a complicated story to tell, and at times the reader might be overwhelmed with colonists' names and Indian place names -- and more maps would help, I think -- but the main lines of the various stories (for there isn't just one) are clear. Bailyn seems to be aiming at the general reader, but some work is required. Some Tudor and Stuart background helps, and it helps to know, for example, what a joint-stock company is and what English policy towards Ireland was in the early 17th century. Readers who aren't up on such things need to do a little work, but it's worth it.Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsA work of enormous scholarship, although other recent works are better reads
By MT57 on January 1, 2013
Format: Hardcover
Bernard Bailyn is a titan in the field of early American history and the 529 pages of text in this book display his mastery of that field. The Barbarous Years presents in thorough detail the first six or seven decades of the Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York settlements and to a lesser extent Delaware and Maryland as well. Certainly anyone looking for a comprehensive overview of these events should read this book.

The Barbarous Years is, mainly, an overview, but, as the title indicates, Bailyn emphasizes the barbaric circumstances of the settlement experience in an attempt to establish thematic unity. He relates in graphic detail the killings, tortures and massacres committed by the European settlers and Native Americans against each other, particularly in the chapters on Virginia. But he takes pains to note how each such group inflicted identical horrors upon its own members as well. In a similar vein, he sets forth the details of the deprivations the Europeans endured in their earliest years, the mean conditions of their daily lives and the astonishingly high mortality rates.

There is also substantial demographic analysis of the settlement communities; significant description of the conditions and events in 17th century England that caused the exodus to America; and a detailed exposition of the diverse viewpoints on religious and other issues, such as land management, within the several communities, and the roots of those differences in England.

The reading experience, however, was not commensurate with the scholarship. Having read Philbrick's "Mayflower" and "The Island at the Center of the World" I was already familiar with the Massachusetts and New York narratives.Read more ›
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3.0 out of 5 starsA decent primer -- no more.
By k on February 18, 2013
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This is an odd book for one of America's premier historians. It isn't a bad book -- a person of Bailyn's erudition couldn't write a bad book -- but it doesn't hang together well. The author does not really have anything new to say and a historian of the Early Colonial Period will quickly recognize the usual sources. It is hard to see exactly what historiographical niche this book fills.

Even the title is misleading. Sure, Jamestown was barbarous enough by our standards and New Amsterdam was plenty harsh. But, the Bay Colony was, by the rough-and-ready standards of 17th century Europe, pretty civilized. (Compare it with the contemporaneous English Civil War or the Thirty Years War.) As for "Conflict of Civilizations," there was certainly enough of that but the most interesting part of the book, the last third or so on the Bay Colony, is largely an account of Puritan theological quarrels.

In fact, one senses that Bailyn felt like he was "home" when he wrote about the Bay Colony. He has, after all, written about New England since 1955 ("Merchants.") He gives the reader a clear account of the theological duels between Winthrop, Cotton, Hooker, Williams, Hutchinson and others. But, others have done this as well or better.

Bailyn all but ties himself in a knot to be politically correct toward the Native Americans. For every Indian atrocity he finds a matching atrocity in European civilization. Still, if captured in war one was likely to be a lot better off among the English, French or Dutch than the Pequods. A LOT better off!

This volume is part of a series that explores the settling of North America and hardly anyone is better equipped for this than the author.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsI recommend it for someone interested in this time period

Very informative. Provides details about the founders of Va/Md/RI as well as the the individuals who came over and their interactions and conflicts both among themselves and with... Read more

Published 16 days ago by patrick hinson
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Book is in excellent condition. Thanks.

Published 1 month ago by Walt concerned
3.0 out of 5 starsIt is 60% history and 40% demographic exposition

The primary problem with this book is the authors overwhelming fetish for demography and tracing the winding lineages of particular immigrant groups, enclaves, and more tediously... Read more

Published 1 month ago by Josh
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Another excellent history book

Published 1 month ago by mitzi
5.0 out of 5 starsWhat a revealing look into our past. Nothing in ...

What a revealing look into our past. Nothing in this book resembles what I was taught in school (in the '40's and '50's).

Published 2 months ago by Tom Z
5.0 out of 5 starsIndians - 2, Settlers - 0.001

When it arrived and I thumbed through the pages, I thought it would be the dullest book I ever tried to read. Once the reading began, it was compelling page after page. Read more

Published 4 months ago by Ingshikawa
1.0 out of 5 starsOne Star

About as interesting as reading a phone book .

Published 7 months ago by James Cox
5.0 out of 5 starsGift for my nephew

This was a requested gift.

Published 7 months ago by R. Tom
3.0 out of 5 starsI loved the part where Roger Williams was a spiritual counselor ...

Really 4 stars if you are interested in a dense history of early New England. Very authoritative, well written. Harvard professor. Just not to everyone's taste. Read more

Published 7 months ago by Greta
4.0 out of 5 starsThis is a very interesting and informative book. It ...

This is a very interesting and informative book. It is exceptionally written and researched. At times the detail was a bit hard to digest but compared to the information gleaned,... Read more

Published 8 months ago by Theodore NAsh

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