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.

Length: 642 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Surveying the founding British settlements of eastern North America, Bailyn, whose laurels include the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes, embeds the stories of Virginia, Maryland, New York, and Massachusetts in details of the transatlantic demographic movements in play. Uprooting oneself required powerful motivations that Bailyn extracts from the emigrants’ social origins in their home countries of England, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Bailyn shows news of the vanguards’ fortunes being sent back to Europe to their sponsors, whose particular responses of raising funds, recruiting reinforcements, and propagating the attractions of America as commercial opportunity, escape from social stratification, or religious refuge generate Bailyn’s narrative momentum through the first several generations of colonization. With such conceptual themes presiding over his presentation, Bailyn graphically emphasizes the settlement process as one of savage brutality, featuring common contempt for human life aggravated, to be sure, by primitive conditions and appalling death rates but epitomized in continual warfare with Indians, remorselessly tending toward their elimination. In Bailyn’s perceptive and erudite hands, the original British, Dutch, and Swedish ventures assume as wild and variegated guises as did the forceful individuals who embarked on them. --Gilbert Taylor

Review

“Magisterial . . . Popular histories often gentrify these early events, but Bailyn’s gripping, detailed, often squirm-inducing account makes it abundantly clear how ungenteel they actually were.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“This weighty book distills a lifetime of learning of one of our most authoritative historians of colonial America. . . . A history of the colonies built up of brilliant portraits of the people who interacted in these strange and fearsome lands. . . . This is not your school-book colonial history. . . . Penetrating and stylish . . . An extraordinary work of profound seriousness, characteristic of its author.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Drawing on decades of sound, dynamic research, the author has provided scholars and general readers alike with an insightful and engaging account of Colonial America that signals a reset on Colonial studies, the culmination of his work. An important book. . . . Superbly told.”
—Brian Odom, Library Journal (starred review)

“In Bailyn’s perceptive and erudite hands, the original British, Dutch, and Swedish ventures assume as wild and variegated guises as did the forceful individuals who embarked on them.”
—Gilbert Taylor, Booklist

“Bailyn spares no gory detail, but he treats his subjects with sympathy.”
—The New Yorker

See all Editorial Reviews

Product details

File Size: 12485 KB
Print Length: 642 pages
Publisher: Vintage (November 6, 2012)
Publication Date: November 6, 2012
Sold by: Random House LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B0082XLXOO
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

X-Ray:

Enabled

Word Wise: Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Screen Reader: Supported

Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #292,156 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #57 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Modern (16th-21st Centuries) > 17th Century
- #123 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Emigration & Immigration
- #153 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Americas > United States > Colonial Period

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Interesting, but a little scattershot (3.75*s)

June 10, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

One thing is for certain, in this highly detailed work by the author, there is no attempt to sugarcoat the European experience in emigrating to America in the 17th century. He examines Virginia, the Chesapeake area, New York, and New England. In the initial stages merely surviving was an accomplishment. Most of the early settlers were clueless about overcoming the harsh conditions that they found, not to mention the savagery that the natives unleashed upon them without warning. A large supply of the weak and vulnerable facilitated this peopling of America, despite the dreadful conditions.

In addition, as the author shows in great detail, are the conflicts among the settlers. America was settled during a time of great political and religious clashes in England. Most of the settlers were Protestants, but held widely differing, contentious views about religious practice. Much of the governance of the colonies was autocratic, inept, and harsh. A good many of the settlers were indentured by contract for years and thereby were practically slaves, in contrast to the well connected who were granted huge estates. But even then, the author points out that the living standards for even the rich were terrible by European standards.

The book is definitely more sociology than historical. One learns about the origins of the settlers across America and the implications for the possibility of robust communities. The author definitely does not hold back on naming thousands of settlers across the colonies; it is difficult to slog through all of that. The book does seem a little scattershot in its organization and subject matter.

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Dean S. Maclaughlin

Best history I've seen of the early colonial years.

March 15, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This goes into much more detail than Fischer's Albion's Seed, which had been one of my favorites. Also paints a far less flattering picture of the early leaders and settlers - not the noble people one learns about in school but a rather scurvy lot. The Pilgrims, for example, were far outnumbered by adventurers, unfortunates, and random outcasts of society. The settlements of Virginia and Maryland seemed to have been not much more than an ongoing internecine fight. I was not even aware of the Scandinavian settlements along the Delaware, or their eventual takeover by the Dutch - before the Dutch were taken over by the English. The discussion of the whole phenomenon if the Puritan movement, both in England and in the New World, is superb.

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J. Spurway

Hard read, but what I wanted..

September 5, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I read books like The Barbarous Years to learn something. I guess you could say there is some entertainment for me, since I chose to read the book.
It was a difficult read. I had to drag out the dictionary a few times.
I was not familiar with some of the people and religious groups he talks about.
So, I had to do a few aside learning.

Bailyn does a good job of interweaving the various threads into the theme.
He discusses the different cultures, religions, and characters that are the history of the 75 year time period. He touches on the Native Americans without going into a lot of detail, just enough to show how they influenced the colonies. He even tells us why he used barbarous in the title.

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Goldry Bluzco

Sheds Light On A Dimly Perceived Period

July 30, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This book is clearly intended for those of us (non-historians) curious about what is a dimly perceived period of North American colonial history. Living as I do in Tidewater Virginia, I consider myself fairly well versed with the earliest years of English settlement or invasion, depending on your point of view. But, I was wrong. I had, of course, read about the wretched first two years of the Jamestown enterprise, but I had no idea just how ghastly the conditions of the first twenty years of the English colonial period were. Wave after wave of newcomers simply starved or died of disease in those years. The mortality rate was shocking. So many people were dying off that the local Indians did not even think it necessary to kill these newcomers (which proved a mistake, of course). And this was not just at Jamestown. For example, the author says that in any given year in one county 30 to 40% of the children under the age of eight were orphans. And the origins of many of these earliest colonists -- orphans dumped by local churches, beggars snatched off of urban streets, prisoners marched from gaol to waiting ships, many poor people literally kidnapped or tricked into emigrating -- was eye-opening. Talk about the refuse of British society. (As an aside, anyone whose humble immigrant ancestors came to Virginia in those years can forget about doing any genealogical research. You will never find the answers to your questions.)

This does tend to be a bleak read. One of the things that jumped out at me was the sad, repetitive tale of European-Indian relations. It mattered not where one was. Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Amsterdam, New York, the pattern is always the same. Trade and early friendly relations were quickly undermined by misunderstandings, stupidity, devious tricks, alcohol, and land disputes that led to attack and counter attack and massacres on both sides.

One of the things I did enjoy was the Indians' views of Christianity. Those mentioned by the author viewed it as little more than a strange dream. When the concept of a universal god was explained to them they laughed and called it a silly fable. I can only agree. My respect for their powers of reasoning and perspicacity rose immeasurably. Just who was the savage?

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HMS

The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America

September 23, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This an incredibly interesting book which deals primarily with the settlement of Virginia, Maryland, and New England. The brief efforts of the Dutch and Swedes are also recounted.
I had never thought about why the Puritan efforts had failed, and the reasons are well recounted.
The book is well written and the research is exhaustive.

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Most recent customer reviews

doug korty

Major historian, long detailed book

I was a history major in college my first two years, then I switched to economics. I found most history book to be too long and detailed.Read more

Published 1 month ago

Anne Scott

I love reading history books

I love reading history books, especially ones about real people's lives. This one intrigued me because of the unusual subject matter, which I have not seen addressed in a book...Read more

Published 4 months ago

Barbara Houtenbrink

At Times, Barbarous To Read

Fascinating reading about the founding and organization of the early colonies, including facts about the Dutch, Puritan and Virginia settlements and antagonistic relationships...Read more

Published 6 months ago

Kevin Black

Five Stars

Great!

Published 7 months ago

PDFero

A genealogy treasure trove

Very thorough description of the peopling of North America.Well documented. Has given me much to look into with my genealogical work.

Published 8 months ago

Andrew F. Siehl

Great book!

An excellent book on a subject that has been overlooked.

Published 11 months ago

R. Hofmann

Readable and informative.

Amazing book. I had no idea of the conditions in America in those years. I was blown away.

Published 11 months ago

S.S.

Five Stars

I enjoyed this book...

Very Detailed. The volume of analysis sometimes bogs the ...

Very Detailed. The volume of analysis sometimes bogs the reading down.

Published 1 year ago

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