American Colonies

{{Short description|2001 book by Alan Taylor}}{{About|the 2001 book|other uses of the term "American colonies"|American colonies (disambiguation){{!}}American colonies}}

{{Infobox book

| author = Alan Taylor

| language = English

| pub_date = November 12, 2001

| publisher = Viking Press

| pages = 526

| image = American Colonies - Alan Taylor - Paperback - 30 July 2002.jpg

| caption = First paperback edition, July 30, 2002

| alt = First paperback edition, July 30, 2002

}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2021}}{{Use American English|date=October 2021}}

American Colonies: The Settling of North America is a book about early American history by Alan Taylor, first published on November 12, 2001, by Viking Press.{{Cite web|date=2001-09-01|title=American Colonies|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/alan-taylor/american-colonies/|url-status=live|access-date=2021-10-13|website=Kirkus Reviews|archive-date=October 14, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211014042645/https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/alan-taylor/american-colonies/}} It is the first volume of the Penguin History of the United States.

The book is divided into three major parts: "Encounters", "Colonies", and "Empires".{{Cite journal|last=Henretta|first=James A.|author-link=James Henretta|date=December 2002|title=American Colonies|journal=The Journal of American History|volume=89|issue=3|pages=1019–1020|doi=10.2307/3092359|jstor=3092359 }} These sections discuss, respectively, the colonial encounter between European settlers and the Indigenous peoples in North America, including through colonial projects such as New Spain; colonies such as the New England Colonies and the province of Carolina; and imperial domains including New France and British America. American Colonies rejects American exceptionalism, focusing on slavery and the displacement and depopulation of Indigenous peoples.{{Cite journal|last=Smith|first=Daniel Blake|date=2001|title=Review of American Colonies|journal=The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society|volume=99|issue=4|pages=405–407|issn=0023-0243|jstor=23384806}} It employs the methods of social history and environmental history, among other approaches.{{Cite journal|last=Dowd|first=Gregory Evans|date=2003|title=Review of American Colonies|journal=The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography|volume=127|issue=1|pages=106–109|issn=0031-4587|jstor=20093604}}

Andrew Cayton describes the book as a "balanced synthesis" of a trend in historical scholarship emphasizing the pluralism and diversity of colonial-era North America, a place in which Indigenous people of the Americas and enslaved Africans, as well as Europeans, created novel social arrangements.{{Cite news|last=Cayton|first=Andrew R. L.|author-link=Andrew Cayton|date=2001-12-02|title=The Way We Were|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/02/books/the-way-we-were.html|access-date=2021-10-14|issn=0362-4331|archive-date=April 9, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210409201259/https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/02/books/the-way-we-were.html|url-status=live}} A starred review in Publishers Weekly likewise noted that American Colonies "challenges traditional Anglocentric interpretations of colonial history by focusing more evenly on the myriad influences on North America's development".{{Cite web|title=American Colonies|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-670-87282-4|url-status=live|access-date=2021-10-13|website=Publishers Weekly|archive-date=September 30, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160930190242/http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-670-87282-4}} Osita Nwanevu, in a retrospective review of American Colonies along with Taylor's later works American Revolutions and American Republics, noted that American Colonies is organized in a more conventional, chronological manner than the other two, which focus on themes.{{Cite magazine|last=Nwanevu|first=Osita|date=2021-08-24|title=The Incoherence of American History|magazine=The New Republic|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/163096/incoherence-us-history-american-colonies-review|access-date=2021-10-14|issn=0028-6583|archive-date=October 6, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211006112227/https://newrepublic.com/article/163096/incoherence-us-history-american-colonies-review|url-status=live}}