American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England

by Katherine Grandjean

New England was built on letters. Its colonists left behind thousands of them, brittle and browning and crammed with curls of purplish script. How they were delivered, though, remains mysterious. We know surprisingly little about the way news and people traveled in early America. No postal service or newspapers existed―not until 1704 would readers be able to glean news from a “public print.” But there was, in early New England, an unseen world of travelers, rumors, movement, and letters. Unearthing that early American communications frontier, American Passage retells the story of English colonization as less orderly and more precarious than the quiet villages of popular imagination.

The English quest to control the northeast entailed a great struggle to control the flow of information. Even when it was meant solely for English eyes, news did not pass solely through English hands. Algonquian messengers carried letters along footpaths, and Dutch ships took them across waterways. Who could travel where, who controlled the routes winding through the woods, who dictated what news might be sent―in Katherine Grandjean’s hands, these questions reveal a new dimension of contest and conquest in the northeast. Gaining control of New England was not solely a matter of consuming territory, of transforming woods into farms. It also meant mastering the lines of communication.

Genres: History

320 pages, Hardcover

First published October 13, 2014

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on 17th/early 18th century New England, summed up pretty well in the conclusion: "Communication, in the end, was an arm of colonization...It drove, as did deeds and crude promises of transferred land, the taking of the northeast." Grandjean argues that historians haven't paid enough attention to lines of communication in colonial New England. She also argues that letters, roads, news circulation, etc had "something" to do with the rise of big political events, most prominently the Pequot War and King Philip's War. It's funny, she's really careful about this claim (or, almost claim), always couching it in delicate language - these wars weren't triggered by communications, they were triggered "somewhat" by communications. Ok, somewhat is fine. I can buy somewhat. It was actually refreshing to read an academic history where the author doesn't make one of those "I Am A Genius Who Has Solved All Of History! No One Has Ever Thought Of This But Me!" claims in the intro. Those are kind of irritating.
When you are just claiming, "hey, I think this is important, don't you?" it goes down better. Grandjean points to the Nipmuck people and their participation in King Philip's War for example. Why did they fight? The English hadn't really started pressing them yet. Well, look at the new pathways of communication...they were seeing a lot more Englishmen on a lot of new roads. Grandjean also provides a great analysis of the Winthrop letters to show that a significant portion were delivered by Indian couriers in the early decades of English colonization. And there is a lot of interesting stuff here about the growing imagined community of Protestant New England and how terrible bloody news started rocketing around the region.
I also liked this quick quip from the late 17th/early 18th century: "travelers...griped about the 'great difficultie in journeying' through Connecticut." Maybe the past isn't always such a foreign country.

[Jessica Barton · Rating 4 out of 5]

read for Atlantic history seminar

well-researched, clearly written, very readable & suitable for a broader audience. Grandjean takes us chronologically through progressions in communication and transportation in early New England. Arguments supporting how difficult information exchange was at the time and the heavy reliance on indigenous courriers.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grandjean’s book, American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England, is a study not just in communication, but a parallel history to the mainstream history of the Northeast, using a tool that many of us take for granted, considering the age we live in, where we have computers in our pockets. Grandjean begins to paint a picture that shows New England not as a bustling series of colonies, but as scattered outposts, evidenced on the very first page with the giving of letters that, more or less, helps murderers nearly escape justice. Grandjean’s thesis, simply put, is one where the development of New England came from the developing of a communications network that connected these scattered outposts into a more or less unified colony (or colonies). In this case, she reads against the grain not as a counter history, but one that is parallel to the mainstream version of history.
Among the evidence that she gives, is a story of the coming of the Pequot War, albeit through different means. Here, Grandjean points out that a main factor in the Pequot war was not simply a lack of communication (perhaps an unwillingness to communicate), but also a lack of food, bringing in environmental concerns. The lack of a viable network with other colonies, combined with a lack of a reliable food source and souring relations with the Native tribes resulted in a breakdown of communications. Chapter Two deals with the beginning of correspondence, personal letters, as a means of connecting township to township. It is hastily pointed out that correspondence was generally given to Native Americans for many reasons, especially during the winter months, and because they were said to not be able to read. Chapter 3 centers around an alleged plot by the Narrangansett, and an argument can be drawn from it that the problem of communication was seen not in the difficulty, but the ease of talking across languages, which the Natives liked to use to their advantage at times.
However, the development of communications, and thus of New England, according to Grandjean, was the arrival of horses, which made, for the most part, Native interference minimal. The second was one that was a war of “roads, posts, horses, woods, footprints, and ambushes.” This in the aftermath of King Philip’s War, which signaled English Intent, due to the influx of people into the county.. Here, Grandjean is sure to include the points of view of many, including the Native Americans, whose land was suddenly in danger from the importation of livestock, such as horses, which threatened their cornfields.
Grandjean’s sources are mainly from the Winthrop family, which I found amazing, considering the sheer amount of personal correspondence between them, but it is mixed with such sources as diaries from other, poorer families that can be seen as opening a wider, potentially balanced view of the communications frontier in early New England. The originality of this work lies in the role of communication, and it is strong in getting the point across on the use of a developing communications network; however, I found the abundance of letters from the Winthrops to be a drawback, considering it is one family, and cannot be considered completely reliable on how events transpired. A variety of sources from many families would have been preferable to show the extent of correspondence and communications. While Grandjean notes that the work is based on letters, which represents a journey, I feel like this doesn’t adequately describe, nor detail, the true extent of communications or its development.
F

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting book for anyone working on their genealogy in the early New England states - or for anyone interested in the history of that area.

[Matthew Rohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting reframing of the early colonial frontier, communication networks, space, and strength and weakness in the early modern period

[Chris Burd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had the pleasure of seeing Ms. Grandjean speak at the Fort Ticonderoga War College earlier this month. I enjoyed her lecture and looked forward to reading the book.

I am not an academic, and I appreciated the "readability" (for lack of a better word) of American Passage. While focused on communications in the early American colonies, the book does a great job of also providing context and simple historical detail to pull the reader in.

I also appreciated - as I saw noted in another review - the acknowledgement that while the author found some details relevant and interesting, she often notes that she also does not want to overstate the important of specific events or objects.

I found this book incredibly enjoyable, and it gave me some basic context into the early days of Colonial America, which is an area that I have not done a whole lot of reading just yet.

[Mark Fallon · Rating 2 out of 5]

An academic treatise on the communications networks in 17th century New England.