The Great Upheaval - by Ian Saxine & Kristalyn Marie Shefveland (Hardcover)

About the Book

The Great Upheaval argues that discrete events in North America from 1675 to 1725 formed a distinct era that was itself an important, violent precursor to the creation of a more interconnected, stable Atlantic world.

Book Synopsis

The Great Upheaval seeks to challenge the periodization employed by most Anglophone scholars of colonial North America and to better integrate scholarship of North America and the Atlantic world with broader early modern histories. Imperial crises were not mere disturbances in a long story of imperial consolidation that began in the early seventeenth century; for a half century these crises--not growth or stability--were the norm. The contributors treat these numerous outbreaks of violence not as interruptions in a "provincial" era but as marking a distinct period in time: the Great Upheaval.

The rigidly enforced social hierarchies in colonial North America during this era accelerated the exchange of people, goods, and ideas in unprecedented volumes, accompanied by rising Anglophone military and commercial power at sea, and a population increase of colonists that were all not only preceded by, but made possible by, the Great Upheaval.

Ian Saxine is an assistant professor of history at Bridgewater State University and cohost of the public history podcast Mainely History. He is the author of Properties of Empire: Indians, Colonists, and Land Speculators on the New England Frontier. Kristalyn Marie Shefveland is a professor of history and assistant dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Southern Indiana. She is the author of Anglo-Native Virginia: Trade, Conversion, and Indian Slavery in the Old Dominion, 1646-1722.

Review Quotes

"The collection helps expand our understanding of Atlantic history by placing significant moments in the history of the Pueblos, Haudenosaunee, Native Southerners, and Native peoples of southern New England alongside other revolutions in European political thought, imperial governance, and Atlantic slavery. Each of the chapters provides a concise overview of major events and processes that will help anyone trying to gain a comprehensive understanding of an astoundingly complex field."--James L. Hill, author of Creek Internationalism in an Age of Revolution, 1763-1818

"These chapters do a very good job using traditional historical narratives to critique linear progress. . . . Using upheaval as a means to critique development, progress, and linearity reveals the many opportunities for non-white or even traditionally marginalized white actors to play the important historic roles they did."--Patrick Bottiger, author of The Borderland of Fear: Vincennes, Prophetstown, and the Invasion of the Miami Homeland

About the Author

Ian Saxine is an assistant professor of history at Bridgewater State University and cohost of the public history podcast Mainely History. He is the author of Properties of Empire: Indians, Colonists, and Land Speculators on the New England Frontier. Kristalyn Marie Shefveland is a professor of history and assistant dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Southern Indiana. She is the author of Anglo-Native Virginia: Trade, Conversion, and Indian Slavery in the Old Dominion, 1646-1722.