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Book Review
| Cultures and Identities in Colonial British America. Edited by ROBERT OLWELL and ALAN TULLY. Anglo-America in the Transatlantic World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 386 pp. $50.00 (cloth).
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What made Americans American? With an impressive collection of accessible essays from twelve historians, Alan Tully and Robert Olwell explore the permutations of culture and identity on the periphery of the British Empire. They set the stage for the essays by emphasizing "the complex dynamics between the imperatives of creolization and Anglicization in early modern British America" (pp. 15–16). While the blend of European, African, and Native American cultures created pronounced and distinct differences between New England, the Middle Atlantic, Chesapeake, the Deep South, and the islands by the end of the colonial period, at the same time an "American" identity was emerging. Collectively, the essays provide geographically diverse views of American cultural development. |
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The book is divided into three sections, each designed to explore the impact of a particular element on the formation of identity and culture. In the first section, the environment is considered as an agent to create cultural adaptations as immigrants from England and Africa learned to survive. S. Max Edelson's essay on slavery in early South Carolina finds that the Anglo-Americans relied upon African slaves to tame a wild land, a paradox given the English understanding of Africans as savages. Daniel C. Littlefield views African slavery from the point of view of the African, asking whether slaves developed "a double consciousness." Using the words of literate slaves—admittedly a problem—he concludes that literate slaves developed divided identities based on Anglo values. Bradford J. Wood investigates the development of a regional, as opposed to a local or transatlantic, identity through land trade, kinship, and centralization in the Lower Cape Fear region. Robert M. Weir surveys timber, fishing, and game regulations governing the colonial environment and their impact on social division. Although the connection between class and conservation is illusive, his essay clearly explains the creolization of American conservation laws to emphasize the importance of private property ownership to Americans. |
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