Bøger af Eric Hinderaker

European colonization of the Americas was shaped by three mass demographic transformations: the catastrophic decline of Native American populations, the forced migration of enslaved Africans, and the mass relocation of European populations to American settings. This essay focuses on the third of these developments. While European emigration to the Americas can be seen as a single, widely differentiated but coherent whole, most scholarship treats it in fragments. We offer a hemispheric perspective on the process of European emigration, considering all of the Americas from 1492 until circa 1800, when most of the hemisphere was becoming independent of direct European rule. We argue that this migration unfolded in three long eras. The foundations of colonial enterprise were laid in the sixteenth century, especially in the two great population centers of the Americas, where the Aztecs and Incas had already established thriving empires. The seventeenth century saw a dramatic proliferation of colonial sites, widespread experimentation with new labor regimes and patterns of social organization, and an acceleration of transatlantic immigration. By the eighteenth century, the essential characteristics of the various colonies were becoming clear and many regions experienced growth and diversification as emigrants responded to new transatlantic opportunities.

The event known as the Boston Massacre is among the most familiar in U.S. history, yet one of the least understood. Eric Hinderaker revisits this dramatic episode, examining the facts of that fateful night, the competing narratives that molded public perceptions, and the long campaign to transform the tragedy into a touchstone of American identity.

In September 1755, the most famous Indian in the world--a Mohawk leader known in English as King Hendrick--died in the Battle of Lake George. He was fighting the French in defense of British claims to North America, and his death marked the end of an era in Anglo-Iroquois relations. He was not the first Mohawk of that name to attract international attention. Half a century earlier, another Hendrick worked with powerful leaders in the frontier town of Albany. He cemented his transatlantic fame when he traveled to London as one of the "four Indian kings."Until recently the two Hendricks were thought to be the same person. Eric Hinderaker sets the record straight, reconstructing the lives of these two men in a compelling narrative that reveals the complexities of the Anglo-Iroquois alliance, a cornerstone of Britain's imperial vision. The two Hendricks became famous because, as Mohawks, they were members of the Iroquois confederacy and colonial leaders believed the Iroquois held the balance of power in the Northeast. As warriors, the two Hendricks aided Britain against the French; as Christians, they adopted the trappings of civility; as sachems, they stressed cooperation rather than bloody confrontation with New York and Great Britain.Yet the alliance was never more than a mixed blessing for the two Hendricks and the Iroquois. Hinderaker offers a poignant personal story that restores the lost individuality of the two Hendricks while illuminating the tumultuous imperial struggle for North America.