What is it about?
It reads Jeremy Belknap's 3-volume History of New Hampshire (1784, 1791 & 1792) as settler history, or the narrative expression of settler colonial thinking over 150 years of English permanent occupation of land in New England. It is a discussion about the role of New England history in embedding settler colonial ideas and practices (exceptionalism, violence, and racial and cultural boundaries) in American culture.
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Why is it important?
New England historiography has been focused on the founding role of Puritanism in shaping the region's culture, but this study for the first time demonstrates the settlers' awareness of the political, racial and cultural specificity of their colonial enterprise. It proposes that settlement, not religion, be put at the heart of colonial New England, as a process of land appropriation and transformation that empowered the settlers to write the history of expansion in their own terms.
Perspectives
Settler colonialism is a fascinating expanding field with remarkable relevance to American colonial history. Reading Belknap as part of my work on John Winthrop I found so many similarities between the two historians, in spite of the 150 years between them, that it became evident settlement was the key to unlocking the logic of sectional identity beyond the traditional divide between the colonial and the national periods. This may be uncomfortable reading for some, but I believe many readers will also find it liberating.
Dr Agnes Delahaye
Triangle UMR 5206
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Jeremy Belknap’s History of New Hampshire in Context: Settler Colonialism and the Historiography of New England, Journal of Early American History, March 2018, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/18770703-00801002.
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