books:

	Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American ... Jack P. Greene The University of North Carolina Press, 1988 - 301 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Greene argues that the New England declension model traditionally employed by historians is inappropriate for describing social change in all the other early modern British colonies. The settler societies established in Ireland, the Atlantic island colonies of Bermuda and the Bahamas, the West Indies, the Middle Colonies, and the Lower South followed instead a pattern first exhibited in America in the Chesapeake. That pattern involved a process in which these new societies slowly developed into more elaborate cultural entities, each of which had its own distinctive features.

Greene also stresses the social and cultural convergence between New England and the other regions of colonial British America after 1710 and argues that by the eve of the American Revolution Britain's North American colonies were both more alike and more like the parent society than ever before. He contends as well that the salient features of an emerging American culture during these years are to be found not primarily in New England puritanism but in widely manifest configurations of sociocultural behavior exhibited throughout British North America, including New England, and he emphasized the centrality of slavery to that culture.

for more information click here

Pursuit of a New Paradigm

Greene is on a mission to show that the South (especially the Chesapeake) represents the "normative" model of American development-not the New England model. To do so, he decries the standard "declension" model, based on the history of Puritan New England, and produces a "developmental" model that he proves was normative for all British New World colonies--here New England represents the exception, not the rule. He seeks to analyze three points. First, to analyze the assumptions that have emphasized the preeminence or normative character of the Orthodox Puritan colonies of New England in the early modern social development and formation of American culture. Second, to evaluate and compare among the experiences of other societies in the early modern British Empire and to formulate a model of colonial social development that made be more broadly applicable than the heretofore used declension model of British colonial history. Finally, to delineate the process by which the general American culture began to emerge out of several regional cultures during the century after 1660 and identifying the most important elements in that emerging culture. Colonial historians have used the declension model to explain the early experiences of the Orthodox European colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut. Greene proposes a developmental model which looks at historical change in new societies as a movement from the simple to the complex. The Chesapeake, being the oldest settle the region, experienced this model first and the others followed - except the New England region, which was atypical from all other British colonies. Green does not discuss Native Americans, and only superficially covers slaves. However, he admits to pursuing his argument with three assumptions: 1) the focus of the book is upon social development and religious, political, and economic developments are considered only as far as their social dimensions are concerned; 2) focus is upon European and African immigrants and their descendants - excludes Native Americans; and 3) attempts to avoid the "idol of origins" which assumes how an area appeared later in time was equivalent to how it began (concerns the subject specially of slavery in the South). An excellent book for any student of American history, it is well written and thoroughly researched. It discusses the major historians and arguments concerning colonial American history.

for more information click here

Virginia, not New England, is the appropriate Developmental Model

In erudite and responsible fashion, Greene establishes his thesis by first laying out the nature of the Chesapeake and New England colonies. Virginia, he states, was the result of profit-driven members of The Virginia Company, and therefore a commercial colony from the beginning. It furthermore was an individualist colony and only accepted the idea of a community after realizing it otherwise would not succeed. By contrast, New England was a religious colony wholly devoted to the community, where not until later was any individualism expressed. Having laid that foundation, he then proceeds to criticize the declension model of New England and to propose a developmental model for the Chesapeake.

His criticism of the declension model rests principally in that it assumes a deterioration of New England culture and quality of life. As such, it cannot properly address the demographic and economic changes occurring in those colonies beginning around 1660. Having thus assessed the validity of the declension model, he then proposes his own developmental model for the Chesapeake region. That model states, in essence, that permanent civilization grew out of temporary colonies by virtue of the change from strictly individual, go-it-alone pursuits to the much more practical individual-within-a-greater-community approach. That latter phenomenon, he demonstrates, is a reflection of life and the socioeconomic situation in Great Britain itself, thereby proving that not only does the declension model fail to hold for the Chesapeake colonies, it was never representative of the Old World either.

He then goes on to describe the socioeconomic nature of the colonies in Ireland, the Middle Colonies around New York along with the Lower Southern colonies beneath the Chesapeake, and the island colonies in the Atlantic and Caribbean. In each case, he ultimately asserts their strong similarity to the Chesapeake colonies and the legitimacy of his developmental model theory. In his final chapter, he brings all the colonies together to explain the creation and development of an American society, and the colonial move from separate and distinct colonies to united and similar states.

The style of Greene's argument is very satisfactory; he makes no assumptions, or at least pretends not to, and fully and somewhat repetitively explains how each colony is similar to the Chesapeake and dissimilar to New England. It is constructed, therefore, so the scholarly reader can jump to the colonies of interest to him/her, skip over the others, and still fully understand the argument.

The argument itself is highly intriguing, and well grounded within the evidence he presents. One cannot help but see the merit to what he writes. That said, there are a few points of caution for the academic reader. First, Greene pays no attention whatsoever to Indians, and less attention than he should to slaves. On Indians, he acknowledges as much in his introduction; however, with the exception of Ireland, settler-Indian relations were pivotal to colonial development. What does he have to say of Bacon's Rebellion, for example, or any of a number of such conflicts? What about the fact that the settlers initially survived on Indian-grown corn, later established a considerable trading system, and even acquired land from them? One might also ask about the social development of the Indians themselves. How did colonization affect them? Greene ignores that entirely. Perhaps he considers Indians' happiness irrelevant to the overall American pursuit of happiness. Perhaps it was simply an oversight, or maybe historiography has not progressed so far as to include the Indians. Does that issue or any settler-Indian issues weaken Greene's model? Perhaps not enough to invalidate it (or to enhance it, for that matter), but enough to have merited discussion.

As to slavery, Robert Olwell writes in Masters, Slaves, and Subjects that slaves too had a social structure that changed over time. Yet, Greene says nothing about it. He discusses slavery only as far as it influenced white settlers' social development. Furthermore, the descendents of these slaves still make up a relevant percentage of the American population; thus, one cannot discuss the "formation of American culture" without addressing the slaves. Again, perhaps the social development of blacks would have had no impact on the relevancy of his model; all the same, he still should have considered it.

A second point of caution is his assertion that the wretched civilization in the Chesapeake ultimately brought about the republican virtues inherent in American government. Perhaps, but as New England scholars have long demonstrated, republicanism was intrinsic to Puritan social philosophy, and declension or no, was well-established a full century and a half before the Chesapeake adopted it.

A last point concerns the central argument Stephen Innes makes in his book, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England; namely, that Puritan philosophy ushered in capitalism. Whereas the Chesapeake adopted repressive measures to stifle the overall economy in favor of elite wealth, New England largely allowed its economy to grow unhindered. Having titled his book "Pursuits of Happiness," Greene utterly fails to discuss the capitalistic nature of the foundation of that happiness: American culture, economy, and government.

Greene tackles an enormous subject and gives it a specific label - his developmental model - that by its very size is certain to have a few holes, most notably the cautions described above. Despite these three points of caution, however, Pursuits of Happiness is an extremely worthwhile book. It lends itself well to discussion of New England declension and colonial development, and certainly, Jack Greene is a historian of established and deserved repute. One may not agree with any or all of the points of his thesis, but even the most devoted student of Bernard Bailyn would do well to consider them.

for more information click here

products you might be interested in

recommendations

Essential History of the American Revolution Era 1750-1790
Colonial British America: 25 Good Starting Points
Some Books I've Assigned on Southern History
What it means to be American
Early America

development

	The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Third Edition ... Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity The Glass Castle: A Memoir Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't