Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America
“With remarkable literary skill, Peter Silver . . . provokes hard thinking about the basic themes of our history.”—Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy

Relying on meticulous original archival research, historian Peter Silver uncovers a fearful and vibrant early America in which Lutherans and Presbyterians, Quakers, Catholics and Covenanters, Irish, German, French, and Welsh all sought to lay claim to a daunting countryside. Such groups had rarely intermingled in Europe, and the divisions between them only grew—until, with the arrival of the Seven Years’ War, thousands of country people were forced to flee from Indian attack.Silver reveals in vivid and often chilling detail how easily a rhetoric of fear can incite entire populations to violence. He shows how it was only through the shared experience of fearing and hating Indians that these Europeans, once irreconcilable, were finally united under the ideal of religious and ethnic tolerance that has since defined the best in American life.
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Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America
“With remarkable literary skill, Peter Silver . . . provokes hard thinking about the basic themes of our history.”—Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy

Relying on meticulous original archival research, historian Peter Silver uncovers a fearful and vibrant early America in which Lutherans and Presbyterians, Quakers, Catholics and Covenanters, Irish, German, French, and Welsh all sought to lay claim to a daunting countryside. Such groups had rarely intermingled in Europe, and the divisions between them only grew—until, with the arrival of the Seven Years’ War, thousands of country people were forced to flee from Indian attack.Silver reveals in vivid and often chilling detail how easily a rhetoric of fear can incite entire populations to violence. He shows how it was only through the shared experience of fearing and hating Indians that these Europeans, once irreconcilable, were finally united under the ideal of religious and ethnic tolerance that has since defined the best in American life.
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Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America

Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America

by Peter Silver
Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America

Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America

by Peter Silver

Paperback(Reprint)

$28.95 
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Overview

“With remarkable literary skill, Peter Silver . . . provokes hard thinking about the basic themes of our history.”—Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy

Relying on meticulous original archival research, historian Peter Silver uncovers a fearful and vibrant early America in which Lutherans and Presbyterians, Quakers, Catholics and Covenanters, Irish, German, French, and Welsh all sought to lay claim to a daunting countryside. Such groups had rarely intermingled in Europe, and the divisions between them only grew—until, with the arrival of the Seven Years’ War, thousands of country people were forced to flee from Indian attack.Silver reveals in vivid and often chilling detail how easily a rhetoric of fear can incite entire populations to violence. He shows how it was only through the shared experience of fearing and hating Indians that these Europeans, once irreconcilable, were finally united under the ideal of religious and ethnic tolerance that has since defined the best in American life.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393334906
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 08/03/2009
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 434
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Peter Silver is an assistant professor of history at Princeton University. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Table of Contents


Figures     xi
Charts     xiii
Map     xiii
Introduction     xvii
An Unsettled Country     3
Fearing Indians     39
Wounds Crying for Vengeance     73
The Seven Years' War and the White People     95
Attacking Indians     125
A Spirit of Enterprise     161
The Quakers Unmasked     191
Barbarism and the American Revolution     227
The Postwar That Wasn't     261
Conclusion     293
Appendix     303
Abbreviations     307
Notes     315
Acknowledgments     387
Index     391
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