Facts On File - Colonial America to 1763 (Almanacs of American Life)
Colonial America to 1763 provides libraries with a compendium of basic quantitative data from the most important government sources and scholarly studies. It includes more than statistical tables. It places this data in scholarly perspective with brief sketches or extended essays (as are appropriate) summarizing current ideas on the broadest range of topics about early American society and culture.The text includes more than 100 illustrations and maps.
Over the last thirty years, postcolonial critiques of European imperial practices have transformed our understanding of colonial ideology, resistance, and cultural contact. The Enlightenment has played a complex but often unacknowledged role in this discussion, alternately reviled and venerated as the harbinger of colonial dominion and avatar of liberation, as target and shield, as shadow and light. This volume brings together two arenas - eighteenth-century studies and postcolonial theory - in order to interrogate the role and reputation of Enlightenment in the context of early European colonial ambitions and postcolonial interrogations of Western imperial aspirations.
Columbus, Shakespeare, and the Interpretation of the New World explores a range of images and texts that shed light on the complexity of the European reception and interpretation of the New World. Jonathan Hart examines Columbus's first representation of the natives and the New World, the representation of him in subsequent ages, the portrayal of America in sexual terms, the cultural intricacies brought into play by a variety of translators and mediators, the tensions between the aesthetic and colonial in Shakespeare's The Tempest, and a discussion of cultural and voice appropriation that examines the colonial in the postcolonial. Synopsis: The hermeneutical interpretation of the "discovery" or "conquest" of the New World by the Europeans began the moment Columbus started writing his accounts of his travels and continued through the writing of Shakespeare's The Tempest and to the present day. Hart (Canadian studies and history, Princeton U.), focusing primarily on European narratives, explores how the colonial project was interpreted and contested, with areas of tension hinging on Columbus' representation of the encounter, the figure of Columbus himself, the gendering of America, and in written works of literature.
From colonial fashions and trades to biographies on key historical figures such as Captain John Smith and Thomas Jefferson, this interactive guide blends engaging activities with facts and trivia about early America. Encouraging readers to explore the daily lives of early colonists, common household items are used for such activities as rug braiding, candle making, weather forecasting, and various Native American games. A colonial time line, common terms used in early American life, and a directory of famous historic sites is also included.
