Brothers Among Nations : The Pursuit of Intercultural Alliances in Early America, 1580-1660

During the first eighty years of permanent European colonization, webs of alliances shaped North America from northern New England to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and entangled all peoples in one form or another. In Brothers among Nations, Cynthia Van Zandt argues that the pursuit of alliances was a widespread multiethnic quest that shaped the early colonial American world in fundamentally important ways. These alliances could produce surprising results, with Europeans sometimes subservient to more powerful Native American nations, even as native nations were sometimes clients and tributaries of European colonists. Spanning nine European colonies, including English, Dutch, and Swedish colonies, as well as many Native American nations and a community of transplanted Africans, Brothers among Nations enlists a broad array of sources to illuminate the degree to which European colonists were frequently among the most vulnerable people in North America and the centrality of Native Americans to the success of the European colonial project. Contents......Page 12 Prologue......Page 16 Introduction......Page 19 1 Mapping the Peoples of the World: Geography, Chorography, and Intercultural Alliances......Page 32 2 Laying the Groundwork for Alliances: Language, Maps, and Intercultural Suspicion......Page 57 3 “You Called Him Father”: Fictive Kinship and Tributary Alliances in Tsenacommacah/Virginia......Page 78 4 Alliance Making and the Struggle for the Soul of Plymouth Colony......Page 99 5 Captain Claiborne’s Alliance......Page 129 6 Alliances of Necessity: Fictive Kinship and Manhattan’s Diaspora African Community......Page 150 7 Nations Intertwined: Alliances and the Susquehannocks’ Geography of North America......Page 179 Epilogue: Captain Claiborne’s Lost Isle......Page 200 Notes......Page 204 A......Page 248 C......Page 250 D......Page 251 E......Page 252 G......Page 253 I......Page 254 K......Page 255 M......Page 256 N......Page 257 P......Page 259 S......Page 261 T......Page 263 W......Page 264 Z......Page 265 "In Brothers among Nations, Cynthia J. Van Zandt argues that the pursuit of alliances was a widespread multiethnic quest that shaped the early colonial American world in fundamentally important ways. These alliances could produce surprising results, with Europeans sometimes subservient to more powerful Native American nations, even as native nations were sometimes clients and tributaries of European colonists. Spanning nine European colonies - including English, Dutch, and Swedish colonies - as well as many Native American nations and a community of transplanted Africans, Brothers among Nations enlists a broad array of sources to illuminate the degree to which European colonists were often among the most vulnerable people in North America and the centrality of Native Americans to the success of the European colonial project."--Jacket This work represents an effort to show how central Native Americans were to the European colonial project by demonstrating that the formation of alliances was the only way for the nascent colonies to succeed.--Résumé de l'éditeur