New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America

by Wendy Warren

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize


Widely hailed as a “powerfully written” history about America’s beginnings (Annette Gordon-Reed), New England Bound fundamentally changes the story of America’s seventeenth-century origins. Building on the works of giants like Bernard Bailyn and Edmund S. Morgan, Wendy Warren has not only “mastered that scholarship” but has now rendered it in “an original way, and deepened the story” (New York Times Book Review). While earlier histories of slavery largely confine themselves to the South, Warren’s “panoptical exploration” (Christian Science Monitor) links the growth of the northern colonies to the slave trade and examines the complicity of New England’s leading families, demonstrating how the region’s economy derived its vitality from the slave trading ships coursing through its ports.


And even while New England Bound explains the way in which the Atlantic slave trade drove the colonization of New England, it also brings to light, in many cases for the first time ever, the lives of the thousands of reluctant Indian and African slaves who found themselves forced into the project of building that city on a hill. We encounter enslaved Africans working side jobs as con artists, enslaved Indians who protested their banishment to sugar islands, enslaved Africans who set fire to their owners’ homes and goods, and enslaved Africans who saved their owners’ lives. In Warren’s meticulous, compelling, and hard-won recovery of such forgotten lives, the true variety of chattel slavery in the Americas comes to light, and New England Bound becomes the new standard for understanding colonial America.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Historical, Audiobook, Race, American

368 pages, Paperback

First published June 6, 2016

Reviews

[Brook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rereading this, as I was unable to recall enough from my last reading and had to pick it up to recall.

This is a story of slavery in what we would mostly think of as "The North," back before cotton was king in the South. It describes the system of slavery as it existed in places like Boston, and how it was much different (still slavery) than the labor-intensive, backbreaking work on Southern plantations. It also goes a bit into the other pre-cotton slave crop farming, sugar, which was, if possible, even more horrible than cotton. It describes, up north, a system where instead of massive plantations where men owned dozens or hundreds of other men, wealthy families would take them in as house servants, etc. Probably similar to house slaves in the south.

I would put this book together with Twelve Years a Slave for a short list of "required reading" for those wishing to learn about what conditions of slavery were like. Twelve describes the cotton-era plantation slavery (and kidnapping of free Negroes, but I don't want to give away more detail to those who have not read it). This book describes the *very* early system of slavery in the colonies. As the book notes, within just a few years of European colonists arriving, they had enslaved (or purchased slaves from) Native Americans, and even started bringing African peoples over (many to eventually be carted again down to the sugar plantations in the Caribbean).

It is not mentioned in the book explicitly, but it might also show how race relations changed in the North, where slaves were *slightly* more able to purchase their own freedom, or be freed with the death of a master, as they were more often personal servants, and not tools of labor (like horses or cattle) that Southern slaves were. The book does note that domestic slaves in the North were tied to a person or persons, whereas slaves in the South, economically and socially speaking, were part of the plantation, to be enslaved generation after generation, in perpetuity.

In short, read (or audiobook) this to learn about the earliest forms of slavery in North America, and then follow up with Twelve to see how it grew in America. Good two-fer.

[Gary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This text sheds a lot of light on the early history of slavery in the United States, particularly that in the area described by the title, though by necessity the author spends a due amount of time discussing the nature of the slave trade in the rest of the "New World" (a term that really should always be presented with quotes) for context. She gives a good amount of attention to the enslavement of native peoples as well as the importation of Africans, a much overlooked aspect of the slavery system in contemporary minds. Her focus pre-dates the period of slavery (the cotton trade era) that is the version that most Americans think of when the subject arises—when it does at all, that is.

Where I think this book might err is in the amount of speculation that the author engages in. Historical records are often sketchy and need to be filled out in any history, even one nearer in time and more heavily documented than a subject centuries ago and sometimes intentionally obscured or simply hazy by merit of shoddy records, missing documentation, etc. However, Ms. Warren spends an awful lot of time presenting possible interpretations of the extant records. She waxes rhapsodic upon the ambiguities and implications of pronouns, wonders about the possible thoughts of those mentioned in the records that are available, and generally dedicates a lot of the text to possibilities and implications where a more objective appraisal would likely be more appropriate. The possibilities and implications would be left up to the reader in an historian more confident in his/er ability to present the history meaningfully.

Nonetheless, this is a good read for those interested in the origins of slavery in the United States, not just in New England. Three stars might be somewhat unfair on my part. 3.5 or 4 (rounded up) would probably be just as valid. I'm going to leave it at 3, however, because for some reason I don't think generosity is a virtue when it comes to this particular subject matter. A colder, harsher, more fact-based history would almost certainly be a better treatment of the subject, and as such the somewhat "soft" presentation of ideas in this text left me a bit cold. It's the "hard" historian in me, if you will.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wendy Warren's New England Bound is a delight - a warmly written, intensely thoughtful, and radically insightful look into the slavery that bound New England to the rest of the Atlantic World. Warren casts her net widely. She not only examines the structures and lived experiences of African enslaved persons, but Indian enslaved persons, too, and refutes the idea that New England was not a slave society by demonstrating how embedded it was in making slavery possible in the Caribbean.

Warren also brings a wonderful empathy to her writing, wondering aloud about the human cost - the loneliness, fear, and isolation - suffered by those who were enslaved. As readers, we are challenged to recognize the humanity in everyone in this book. It is too easy to hold enslavers at arm's length and to assume we would not do the same things in their shoes; it is too easy to assume that African and African-descended people did not feel for their families as people do today; it is too easy to clear our mental landscapes of Indian people. Warren's book challenges us to do more, and better, at every turn. A fabulous book.

[Sue Tretter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book and at the same time frustrating because so little is known of the "little people" whose names are mentioned. I was fortunate in that she writes several pages about a slave of one of my ancestors, Henry Bartholomew. The enslaved man, John, committed suicide and thus warrants attention yet so little is know about him, his original name, where he originated, how he came to be enslaved, what prompted his suicide, and what benefits did he hope to gain through suicide.
Ms Warren can't "reclaim" lives but she does seek to use a variety of primary sources to provide in the case of John a "snapshot". The process leaves one thankful for the snapshot but wishing for more, a full-length documentary perhaps. Largely, she succeeds and the book is very rewarding, given the limitations of original documents.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most Americans know about slavery on southern plantations, and about New England's role in achieving abolition. As school kids, most Americans learned about the horrors of plantation slavery, and were taught to take pride in the wisdom and perseverance of  the Northern states as leaders of the abolition movement. What we weren't taught anything about was the institution of slavery in New England, where many Native Americans and the first Africans were enslaved within a decade of the founding of Plymouth Colony. More than a few studies of this topic have been published in the past decades or so and are gradually making inroads into the public's awareness of this hidden history.  Wendy Warren's meticulously researched new book is a welcome addition to the discussion.  Prominent 17th century families such as the Winthrops and the Mathers, and countless ordinary families either owned slaves, trafficked in them, or built their fortunes on the forced labor, deprivation, and pain of several thousand kidnapped individuals. 

New England Bound draws upon such primary documents as court records, journals, and runaway slave notices to illustrate the breadth of this system in the context of the Triangle Trade. But more interestingly, the author has interpolated some of the ways in which the lives of those enslaved were impacted by the experience.  For example, Indian captives were locally available but proved to be difficult to manage because, being natives, they had recourse to a network of kin; for this reason, they proved less reliable than Africans, and most Indians  were sold/shipped off to the West Indies. Warren does a particularly effective job of presenting the  psychological effects of being ripped away from one's family and social network  to an alien environment oceans away. Slave laws prevented the forging of new connections (families, networks of friends)  for these victimized people, whose sense of isolation must have been profound, whether they were island bound or working in a New England farmstead.

Writing in a flowing style, Warren provides much food for thought. She also looks into the earliest anti-slavery tracts, the very first written at the end of the century by none other than Samuel Sewall of Salem Witchcraft fame. Reading this book will forever change the reader's conception of America's first hundred years. 

[Laura Sackton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Huh. This was not exactly what I was expecting. Warren does a brilliant job illustrating how deeply slavery was woven into the economy and culture of colonial New England. We (especially New Englanders like me) often tend to think of New England (and much of the North in general) to be somehow less complicit in slavery than the South. This, of course, is completely untrue--New England was built on a slave economy, and the Atlantic slave trade was as crucial to its beginnings and successes as the eventual cotton trade was to Southern economic growth.

This book is essentially a catalogue of various events and records--lawsuits, court cases, stories of crimes carried out by slaves and colonists, the wills of slaveholders, land disputes, stories of slaves who successfully or unsuccessfully sought their freedom. In relaying all these details, Warren depicts New England colonial life as it was, where slavery, both visible and distant (i.e. New England's deep connections to sugar plantations in the West Indies), was both commonplace and accepted

I found the book a bit dry, and the tone, at times, a little too matter-of-fact. There were moments when it felt like the writing was a bit too much from the point of view of the colonists, which made it very uncomfortable to read. It's obvious that the book is intended to shed light on the history of slavery in the north--which it does--but sometimes it felt like an impartial recounting of events, which was sometimes off-putting. The bulk of the writing was just incident after incident, with little reflection or broader analysis. Sometimes I got a bit lost in the names and dates.

Still a worthwhile read, one that helps illuminate how deeply racism and white supremacy is embedded in American history (and the American present). Many New England colonies may have outlawed slavery before the Civil War, but its lasting damage, and the legacy of violence it left, had already been done.

[Rachel Burdin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting and insightful book about slavery in New England. Warren lets everyone involved--white New Englanders, enslaved Africans, and Native Americans --speak for themselves, as far as she is able, and in doing so, drives home their humanity (for better, or for worse).

[Stan Prager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review of: New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America, by Wendy Warren
by Stan Prager (6-26-16)


Early on in New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America, a telling story is related that dates back to 1638, not even two decades removed from the Mayflower, of an English colonist near Boston who owned three enslaved Africans – two women and one man – that he sought to turn into breeding stock. When one of the females refused, he ordered the male slave to rape her in an attempt to impregnate her. The rape victim went out of her way to report what had occurred to another Englishman nearby, who in his written account of their conversation seemed to show some sympathy; however, his very next journal entry was a humorous description of his encounter with a wasp. [p7-8] It is clear that as property she otherwise lacked recourse under the circumstances. What does this one unusual anecdotal incident at the dawn of the colonial New England experience really tell us? It turns out that it is far more instructive than the reader might at first suspect, as Princeton University Professor Wendy Warren’s fascinating new contribution to the history of slavery in colonial North America reveals in the pages that follow.
While many fine works of history in the past several decades have rightly restored the long-overlooked role of New England in the triangle trade that was central to the growth of slavery in the colonies, little attention has been paid to slavery as it actually existed in those northern colonies prior to abolition. The standard tale is that slavery never really caught on there, largely because the region lacked the climate and the crop for the plantation agriculture it was best suited for, and as such this untenable anachronism gradually faded away. There is so much truth to that summary that few have bothered to dissect the actual slave experience while it thrived in New England, albeit on a much smaller scale than in the southern colonies and the West Indies. This neglect has badly shortchanged the historiography of the origins of human chattel slavery in colonial North America.
By moving the focal point away from the traditional emphasis upon the Chesapeake, South Carolina, and the Caribbean, Warren has surprisingly uncovered how much slavery in New England actually had in common with slavery in those other more familiar locales. The rape story she opens with is unexpectedly emblematic of the institution of African slavery in the Americas. Slave women had no rights as property, and therefore no control over their own bodies, which meant they could indeed serve as breeding stock, a financial boon in Virginia even in Jefferson’s time as slavery became less profitable in the Chesapeake while prices soared for field hands on the cotton plantations of the deep south. It also meant that they could be compelled to sexual relations with their owners, which is why, as South Carolina’s Mary Chestnut drily noted in 1861: “Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all in one house with their wives & their concubines, & the Mulattos one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children . . .” That meant of course that English common law needed to be turned on its head, so that the children of slaves were condemned to inherit the condition of perpetual servitude from their mothers, regardless of whether their fathers were slave or free. This was codified in Virginia in 1662 as Partus sequitur ventrem but Warren reminds us that it was already clearly understood as such in Massachusetts in 1638. [p156]
Interestingly, Warren also reveals that a 1690 Connecticut law mandating a curfew for “Negroes” managed to presage portions of the slave codes popular in the south by several decades. Massachusetts adopted a similar ordinance. [p201] The ambivalence towards the cruelties inherent to slavery is nevertheless also evident. When it became clear that owners were freeing slaves when they became too old or infirm to profitably toil as units of labor, Connecticut passed a law in 1702 directing slave-owners to care for elderly slaves, whether or not they had been freed, something otherwise left to arbitrary custom in the south. [p176] But apparently those in New England were not immune to the cruel and unusual punishments inflicted upon wrongdoers who happened to be African slaves: Increase Mather chillingly reports that in 1681 the enslaved Maria, convicted of arson and murder, was burned alive at the stake. [p199] Regardless of geography, slaves were often underfed, and sometimes resorted to theft for sustenance. In Connecticut in 1699, a slave who stole “a bisket” on the Sabbath suffered the medieval punishment of thirty lashes and a brand to the forehead. [p211] Whipping and branding became quite common in the Antebellum south. Also echoing another common practice in the south, Warren reports that in 1698 hunting dogs were employed to track down a “Negro.” [p207-08] Warren reminds us that Amerindians were also enslaved, although this was much less widespread, but tellingly a 1697 broadside seeking a runaway Native American slave also neatly anticipates the runaway slave advertisements later so common in newspapers below the Mason-Dixon. [p212]
It is in her coverage of Amerindian slavery that Warren falls short, if only because she seems to promise more than she delivers. The slavery of Native Americans, who were often sold to the West Indies, is a little-known element of early Americana and probably deserves a book-length treatment of its own. Given the scant number of pages Warren devotes to the topic, she might have best simply left it alone. Yet, this is perhaps only a quibble when one considers how well the author succeeds in demonstrating that slavery was indeed integral to all geographies of the English colonies and was shockingly similar in its elemental form both north and south. That New England always seemed to harbor a certain sense of guilt about the immorality of slavery –and that it eventually acted to bring this heinous practice to an end – perhaps mitigates some of its culpability in perpetrating this great evil, yet by no means can that serve as an excuse to overlook or forgive its deep complicity in it. Every student of the history of the institution of slavery and of early American history would benefit from reading Warren’s fine book.


My review of New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America, by Wendy Warren, is live on my book blog https://regarp.com/2016/06/26/review-...

[Jonathan Lerdau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for class over the course of the semester. Very accessible and one of those books that is so frightenly smart it makes you mad someone else wrote it. Worth a look

[Merrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense, but important history that is often glossed over.

[Vel Veeter]

And it’s got a pun in the title! A not very funny pun. Hrm, a slavery pun does feel a little gross.

Anyway, this was a finalist for the Pulitizer this year and so my local library picked up a copy and put it on Overdrive. It was a relatively short listen (read) and offers a sober, straight-forward assessment of New England colonies’ role in the slave trade. One of my favorite books ever is Changes in the Land by William Cronin, which details the New England colonies’ role in deforestation and this book has a similar goal and effect of challenging the mythical history of the puritans. Like other works by Sacvan Bercovich, Perry Miller, and their like, this book basically suggests that the New England had a significantly larger role in the establishment and perpetuation of the slave trade than is generally discussed, that their positioning themselves as moral leaders in this country is fraught, even and especially by their terms, and that historical alternatives were both argued for and available at the time.

Some moments that made me think through this: apparently there was a specific need for laws in Connecticut to stop people from “freeing” their older slaves when they were not particularly useful to them anymore to keep from having to pay for their care. There was a fairly popular sentiment that slavery was not only the will of God, but also a mark of meekness/suffering that could help ensure promising afterlife…an old argument to be sure, but one especially nefarious given Calvinist doctrine of the Elect and the Preterite limited salvation. What else? Oh, the old gem of not wanting to free slaves because of how mad slaves would be at them. But what was especially interesting was looking into the history of the enslavement of Indians in New England.

Overall, this is well-researched and carefully argued, but it’s not wonky or too specific. It’s history meant to be read and it’s quite readable.

[Kb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a history of New England, and as such it was unfamiliar to me, barring typical images of pilgrims at Thanksgiving. (The myth of settlers and natives sitting down and eating together in harmony seems to be a carefully crafted fiction that belies the actual truth of colonization, where natives were "removed" and sent to the West Indies as slaves, then "replaced" by African slaves who helped with the work of colonization: mainly contributing to the running of households, but also labouring to clear land and performing other hard jobs.)

As a Canadian, my history lessons included learning about the seigneurial system, and the coureurs-de-bois who lived among the natives and facilitated the fur trade -- a kinder, gentler early history, which was superseded by the English system after Wolfe defeated Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham in 1759. But I digress...

Wendy Warren's research looks at the history of slave-holding and the slave trade as it affected New England (mainly Boston) from the earliest colonizers to approximately the year 1700. The book makes use of (and liberally quotes) original sources. Reading it gives me, an outsider, new insight into what I think of as "the American psyche". By that I mean I have gained new understanding of the present by reading about the past. Today's political leaders are not very different from their early New England counterparts. (However, the most interesting knowledge I gained was that the slave trade included Indians [Native Americans] as well as Africans.)

The writing was mildly irritating at times, with speculation and editorializing that came across as patronizing. I believe the intent was to emphasize that the suffering of the enslaved must always discredit any and all complaints of enslavers. However, there are times in the book when the point feels overstated.

But in spite of occasional annoyances, the amount of information on the subject made it worth reading.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

So you think you know about slavery in the United States? Think again. If you grew up in New England and thought that slavery was only about plantations in southern states you sorely are mistaken. A good overview on how slavery in and connected to the northern states affected the economy and life of early colonial inhabitants. Of great interest is the focus on Native American slaves and how they were used as a trade "item". Highly recommended for anyone who wishes to understand the slave trade or early New England history.

[Ian Yarington · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought it was good and well written but not sure it was all I thought it would be. Certainly good and worth the read because it's hard to find a true and honest representation of the slave trade. I feel like everything academic on the slave trade tries to paint certain pictures and doesn't get into the facts that much. This book sticks to facts within an anecdotal writing style.

[Elaine Messineo]

Tons of information based on documentation. It changed my whole perspective on
slavery around the world and in particular early America.

[Dora Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

On historical detail about the involvement of New England with slavery, why and how New England was founded, and what New Englanders, some of them my ancestors, exactly were thinking when they held slaves, and even its relations with the local Indian tribes, this book is excellent. There is detail on some of the people who kept slaves as well.

I was especially impressed by the degree to which the New England Puritans weren't at all nice people. In fact in both their motivations and their tactics, they rather resembled Trump and his people. I knew that many of my own ancestors who settled there were merchants, and some of them were also often bigoted Puritans. This book reveals that actually, profit was a higher priority than God. Also, while I knew that New England shipped goods to and from the Carribean, and participated in the slave trade, and that some of my ancestors participated in this by canoeing down the Connecticut River and along the coast, I hadn't realized that the wealthier members of the colony had active interests in both New England AND the Carribean, including, it sounds like, some of my ancestors, in addition to the Potters and the DeWolfs who everyone descended from them knows of their role in the slave trade.

I would have rated it 5, but it is seriously marred by the author's perceived need to devote half the text to moralizing about how miserable slaves were and how wrong slavery and its conditions were. Can she think we doubt whether slavery was wrong? I expect that actually she is just accumulating Progressive academic brownie points by constantly browbeating the reader with this. Most of us would just take for granted that slavery was both wrong and often miserable. Since I am listening to the book on Audible while at work, I can't just skip over what I don't want to read. The constant hyper-Progressive moralizing is extremely irritating and not at all edifying. How many times can I need to be extensively beaten over the head with, for instance, how miserable slaves felt when they got smallpox and were temporarily shipped to Barbados to get well. She doesn't just go into that once, she keeps repeating it, exactly as if she had dementia and she didn't remember she already said all of that. Atleast a dozen, so far, and I'm about a quarter of the way through the book.

Since some of my ancestors as well as the circles they travelled among are in the book, I am going to buy a hard copy.

[André La Crout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging, informative, and enlightening

It’s often true that we think of slavery in America as primarily being a feature in southern history.

However, the very act of colonization involved heavy doses of slavery everywhere it happened and this book details just how much it happened in the northern American colonies of New England specifically.

The colonies in New England learned from the mistakes made at the failed colony of Jamestown, Virginia…

I’ll never forget an angry college professor ranting about Jamestown, comparing it to sending circus chimps to the moon and expecting them to figure out how to survive… The English sent a bunch of knights and nobles to Jamestown, people who typically didn’t do any sort of labor themselves, but rather had others do it for them. With no one around to do the work, they died in catastrophic numbers.

In New England, they weren’t all a bunch of knights and nobles, but they made sure they brought in people to do the work for them — slaves. Lots of slaves.

When people say slaves “built this country,” they’re not exaggerating, and this book lays bare some of the details to that end.

It stays relatively engaging from beginning to end, but there are a few stretches that get a little dry — usually in the form of paragraphs about who was whose father and who inherited what from whom, etc. It’s not unlike some of the Bible passages listing people begetting each other. I understand why the author put them in here, but that doesn’t make them any more fun to read.

Some may withhold stars for how often the author reads between the lines of source material and draws conclusions that aren’t explicitly stated in historical documents. I see no reason to withhold any stars over that though when almost all of said conclusions are perfectly logical.

Overall, a great book for better understanding colonial American history and the role slavery played in it.

[Annabelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

wonderfully written.

not only is this a book composed by someone who clearly has researched the subject extensively, but the writing is beautifully clear and informative. warren's distinct flair shines through: i thought "the devil is in the details" part in chapter 1 was particularly clever.

also, each chapter was around 30 pages, and i appreciated the consistency.

reasons why i rated this three stars:
- warren uses commas a bit too loosely, but i can look past that.
- the main reason is that i fell asleep 5 times while reading this and that kind of set off my whole day haha

final note: not the worst summer reading book!!

several highlights:
"With big dreams and little talent for achieving them"
"Indeed, the elder Winthrop might have been proud of Henry's accomplishments in the Caribbean, except that there weren't any."
"With prices so low, profits in the West Indies would have been impossible to miss." this sounds like an ad
"peculiar to pine country"
"slapped him with a fine of forty shillings"
"not even slavery could obviate the obvious"
"'hoe knows'"
the names "Waitstill" and "Increase" (as FIRST NAMES) and "Shrimpton"
"Not everyone would find the loss of linen adequate preparation for a spouse's death, but Winthrop was a man who could see salvation in every sorrow. Besides, Winthrop had four wives in his lifetime. He had learned to find consolation in the widowed state."
"The maid's deed... illuminated the early New England social hierarchy as surely as it illuminated Bridget Pierce's linen." HELP
"Indeed, there are few good ways to be killed."
"regardless," "even though," and "nonetheless" being used in one single sentence
"theft threatened propriety and property"
"in just one transparent sign of his wealth, the combined windows of his house had more than 480 panes"
"the vegetarian hatter Thomas Tryon"
"In the absence of a bench, one was made of pumpkins"

[Shrike58 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prof. Warren is at her best in examining how the early New England colonists expediently embraced slavery of both Black and "Indian" folk so as to make their polity viable, before exploring the creation of the famed trade triangle of New England, the Sugar Islands of the Caribbean, and homeland of the British Isles.

This analysis is delivered with an unflinching gaze, as Warren considers the rampant expediency of the (mostly) Puritan Fathers, as their supposed faith empowered their acts, supercharged by their wars with the First Nations. How Warren teases out the interlocking elements of Indian and Black slavery is a big part of this book.

Less good are Warren's efforts to tease out what this whole experience meant to those bound to this system, as it's inevitably going to seem somewhat speculative. This further ties into how Warren's efforts examine how the New England practice of slavery wound up being, dare I say it, white-washed out of history. At a certain point the population of folks in African descent in the region appears to have felt less like a collection of aliens, and more like part of the community, and it made slavery less easy to live with from the prospective of the masters. That slavery in New England was always a personal affair, and not an industrial process also had to have had an impact.

Finally, I'm always going to be a little irritated when there is no proper bibliography in a book such as this, though Warren's footnotes are structured very much as a bibliographic essay.

Still, even if I seem a bit underwhelmed in spots, about ten years on this book remains news worth hearing.

[Nightwitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who grew up in and now lives in New England, this is such a necessary book - the role of slavery in the colonization of New England is one that really has not been discussed. (Maybe it has in academic circles, I don't know, but I certainly didn't learn about it growing up or in a more general sense as an adult with a vague interest in local history.) It's absolutely mind-boggling to read prominent Bostonians writing things like, oh, hey, we should go to war with the locals so that we can take prisoners of war and sell them into slavery on sugar plantations - I'd love the chance to make some cash. In all honesty, I had no idea; while I was aware of the general enslavement of the native populations, the ways in which New England participated and benefited from the slave trade just... hadn't occurred to me. That said, this book isn't perfect; it's very readable but it sometimes feels more than a little overstuffed with facts, and the paucity of further details can get disappointing. We really only get glimpses into the lives of enslaved people in New England - when they appear in wills or court cases or a diary entry - and that's just a function of the historical evidence. Over all, though, such an important book.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wendy Warren's New England Bound is a well-researched book about the ways in which the displacement and enslavement of Indigenous and African peoples formed the foundations of the United States of America. Warren's discourse, bolstered by meticulous records kept by property owners, court systems, and others, makes real events that so many contemporary folks either don't know about or pretend did not happen.

I was most struck by the concept of "unplanting and replanting" as a way to create a world. Colonizers cut down trees to use for building and also to prepare the land for crops. They removed Indigenous peoples, through wars, diseases, and shipping off the continent and enslaved them along with other "replanted" peoples - Africans.

Warren's book reminds readers that enslaving people was essentially a financial system. Colonizers came to this continent to escape social or religious restrictions and also to make money. The need to maximize profits overrode people's moral compasses and twisted their ethics.

I highly recommend this book. While it isn't the easiest to read because of the systemic, legal, disenfranchisement and cruelty toward others, it is a well-documented and compelling narrative.

[Ariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

As it turns out, the heyday of slavery in New England was long before the "peculiar institution" took over the South. Warren argues persuasively that enslaved native Americans and Africans were both scattered throughout the colonists' households from the earliest days of the Mass. Bay Colony, and that colonist John Winthrop's famous "city on a hill" was predicated on the existence of outsiders: "standing all around the base of that holy hill were enslaved and colonized people on whose backs the holy city was in a myriad ways constructed."

Not only were New Englanders the grocers of the West Indies, freeing Jamaica and Barbados to focus on producing sugar in their lethal plantations and receiving much needed cash in return, New Englanders also received slaves from the West Indies and sent ill or disobedient slaves there. They were tied into the commerce of the Empire and family members moved freely between New England and the West Indies. Probably the most disgusting and upsetting detail was that these self-described pious people sold barrels fish considered too foul for white people to the plantations of Jamaica and Barbados--and that was before a three-month sea voyage!

[Peter Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many, I'd always considered slavery a thing of the South, even my family is from New England. Warren's book fills a gap in our knowledge with the telling of a history in which slavery was an integral part of the wealthy, New England merchant class from the early decades of the 17th century through the end of the 18th. She adds complexity to our understanding of how slavery "worked," that it was not just Africans but also Native Americans forced into bondage and traded, and that the sugar cane economy of the Caribbean economy - built mercilessly on the backs of slaves there working under such harsh and dangerous conditions as to lead to the common understanding that being sent meant receiving a "death sentence" - allowed Boston and the surrounding colonies to become what they would become. In turn, it was the fish, beef, and produce that New England made - and the slaves they traded - that vitally fed the Caribbean plantations. Warren also achieves one of her stated goals, to give life today to the spoiled lives of those 17th century New England slaves with intimate and detailed tellings of what they had gone through.

[Kevin B. Jennings · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way American History is taught, slavery is often confined to the South. As this extraordinary book I’ve just finished documents, enslaved people of both Black and Indigenous heritage — were held and sold as property in New England as well, as late as the 1840’s. Though never as central to the region’s labor force or economic structure as they were in the South, enslaved people were a part of both colonial and early US societies in New England. The author makes skillful use of the relatively-scant documentation not only to document the existence & accepted nature of slavery in New England but also to help us understand it through the eyes of those who were enslaved — no mean feat, given the paucity of documents in which these folks got to speak in their own voices. No community or region has a monopoly on either virtue or evil, and each must reckon with its own unique history. This is an important contribution to they effort.

[Drick · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this well documented historical account, Wendy Warren explores the little known or acknowledged New England slavery of both Africans and Native Americans. In the 17th century, New England engaged in a vibrant trade between England, Africa, Barbados, and Salem/Boston. Drawing on primary sources Warren describes the attitudes and actions of the Puritan settlers and conjectures the experience of the enslaved Indians and Africans. At times the detail got a bit tedious, but there is no doubting this is a well-documented piece for those who like the historiographic approach. Warren's basic thesis is that while there was a modest slave trade in New England, neither the geography nor economy lent itself to expansive slavery. As such the interactions between whites and blacks ( less so Indians) was more personal which may have led to the early abolition of slavery

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good book that gives the lie to the idea that slavery never took root in New England. Not only did it take root in the 17th century and persist far into the 18th century, New England also benefited greatly from the slave trade, both directly and indirectly. Directly, because many ship owners provided transport for slaves from Africa to the Caribbean, and to a certain number of slaves destined to be sold in New England itself. They also shipped large amounts of food to the slave plantations of the Caribbean, and many New Englanders owned many of the plantations, either in part or completely. This book also reveals the depredations perpetrated against the indigenous tribes which included the sale of captured individuals into slavery, many often sold off to the Caribbean to almost certain death, considering the extremely harsh conditions of slavery there.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This audiobook revealed the often-overlooked role of slavery in New England during the 1600s. There were no cotton plantations in the region (those would come later in the South), but many White colonial families owned a slave or two for domestic service. Some of their indentured servants were White but those in bondage for life were either African or Native.

Even for those who did not own slaves, and the very few who were anti-slavery, the New England economy was still dependent on trade with the West Indies, selling food crops to the British-controlled islands in exchange for the back-breaking, slave-labored goods such as sugar and tobacco. The general attitude of New Englanders at the time was either a casual acceptance of African and Native slavery, or a strong support as justified (supposedly) by the Bible.

Recommended.

[Ai Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really really enjoyed this--it was concise and not boring, it created empathy and space for all kinds of experiences, and it's a trade history publication that talks directly about settler colonialism! I could see this being really incredibly useful in undergraduate courses or even just to start conversations with folks outside the academy (it could be a really excellent book club book, for example!) Obviously there are limitations to its scope, and I've read reviews about sourcing she doesn't use, but I think it's a really solid introduction to enslavement in New England and fighting the dominant narratives about that.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise overview of slavery in New England from 1620-early 1700s. Warren describes the complex relationship of New England in the Atlantic world and how its relationship to the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe lead to involvement in the slave trade, the importance of slavery to the economy of New England, and the way that enslaved people being both brought to and sold from New England became commonplace. Warren also focuses on the the enslavement of Native American peoples during wars between English colonists and native nations and the stratification of New England society between European, native peoples, and enslaved (and later freed) black colonists.

[Aja Marsh · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject matter is interesting, but the approach of this book felt more like an extended reading of snippets of documents and the like-- an anthropological collection in a sense. I was hoping for more substance overall, but still got through it out of general curiosity as it is a part of "New World" slavery not much discussed in US History. Annoying audio actor choice-- hard to listen to, but doing this as an audiobook better guaranteed I'd get through the content than reading an e-book or paper copy.