David Grayson Allen

From the Introduction to Seventeenth-Century New England (David D. Hall and David Grayson Allen)

This collection of essays comes out of a conference held to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the founding of Massachusetts. Amongst the most significant issues addressed at the conference were issues of continuity and change in the transition from European to American societies. Work in the 60s and 70s on colonial New England pointed to discontinuities, with local studies showing changes in post-Revolutionary America which represented a break with the traditional values of rural England. For instance, one thinks of Phillip Greven's study of Andover, MA. As an outgrowth of the Revolution and the social forces unleashed society became less hierarchical. The revisionists, reacting against the "consensus history" of the 1950s, often erred on the side of over-emphasizing change and ignoring continuities. The debates seem to have stalled, become less than fruitful. We have moved on from the arguments over family structure, these debates seem dated ... The new organizing paradigm reflected in this volume is the impact of market forces on the New England Colonies. The new question is how integrated were the New England colonists in a market economy?

Another trend in the historiography was the attack of the 1960s social history on intellectual history of the 50s. Darrett Rutman's Winthrop's Boston was a response to Perry Miller's New England Mind, which essentially argued that the complex theology of the Puritan Divines had little to do with how ordinary people thought and acted. The new synthesis coming out of the 70s and 80s posited the porousness of boundaries between the theology of the ministers and the world of common folk. Bringing religion back into the social history, the new approach is probably best seen in the work of David Hall (World of Wonders). The religious elite incorporated many popular beliefs in their writings and sermons and the common people were hardly as irreligious as posited by the social historians of the 1960s. Religion had regained its interpretive force as a major element in New England Society.

Climate and Mastery ...

It is the argument of this paper that in the final two decades of the century, a dramatic deterioration in the weather combined with other events to create the profound disillusionment and self-doubt among the colonists which many other historians have described. To discuss this period without understanding the weather conditions faced by the colonists is to omit a crucial part of the picture. (p. 30)

New Englanders were faced in the 17th C with harsher weather in the New England colonies than they had anticipated. Kupperman argues that the colonists saw the hand of Providence in the weather, as in everything else, and it was in this light that they interpreted weather as a sign of God's approval or punishment for their misdeeds. Several of the winters of the 1630s and 40s were extremely harsh, binging the Puritans face to face with the reality that New England was colder than it should have been given its similar latitude to that of England.

Fretting over the prospects for future colonization, the New England promoters sought to assuage concerns in England by pointing to abundant firewood and stressing the fact that with hard work, sturdy houses could be built in which all could be comfortable. Native maize grew well, but this wasn't enough for the promoters who wanted to prove that English plants grew well in New English soils. Therefore they planted barley, oats and rye - all of which seemed to do well in New England's soil. By the 1640s prospects looked better that English agriculture could prosper in the New World.

There was a belief that the technology of Europe would transform the land and the climate. By improving the land, they would make it fruitful and even change the climate in so doing. As the harsh winters of the 1630s and 40s gave way to milder winters in the 50s - 70s, the colonists saw proof of their belief. The harsh winters of the 1680s-90s gave rise to a good deal of self-doubt and introspection.

The period of self-doubt in New England began with King Phillips's War 1675-6, which corresponded with the first bad winter of the latter half of that century. By allowing Indians to attack them, God was punishing the colonists. This was followed by King William's War 1689, when settlements were again attacked. Following on King William's War, the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter was revoked. Yet another cause for anxiety... Now the government of England increased taxes to pay for the colonial wars and this could not have come at a worse time. Due to the harsh weather the harvest yields were down and the colonists could barely feed themselves. The colonists suffered from the dual burdens of heavier taxation and famine. In this context, the weather was surely a sign from God that they had strayed from their special mission.… (mehr)