The Peopling of British North America
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Bernard Bailyn’s Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (1986, ISBN 0-394-55392-6) limns major themes of European migration to colonial British North America. His book barely mentions the forced migration of African slaves, the existence of Amerindians, and non-migratory peopling patterns. A quick paraphrase of Bailyn’s four propositions summarizes the book's thesis.
Proposition One: The peopling of British North America was an outgrowth of European domestic mobility, an extension and expansion of European migration and population patterns (20).
Proposition Two: No uniform settlement pattern of British North America exists. The peopling of British North American is non-static and characterized by constant motion and differentiation (49-50)
Proposition Three: Land speculation and population recruitment were "major stimuli" to the peopling of British North America. Land speculation and population recruitment created new and different relationships between landowners, renters, and workers in British North American than the ones previously known in Europe (60).
Proposition Four: American culture is best understood as a strange mix of savagery and civilization, on the far western periphery of European culture. Bailyn calls this far western periphery a "marchland" (112).
Numbers in parenthesis refer to page numbers in Peopling of British North America.
