"Our time of anarchy" : Bacon's rebellion and the wars of the Susquehannocks, 1675-1682 / Matthew Kruer.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Kruer, Matthew, 1981- author.

Contributor:

Richter, Daniel K., degree supervisor.

Brown, Kathleen, degree committee member.

St. George, Robert, degree committee member.

University of Pennsylvania. Department of History, degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Penn dissertations--History.

History--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

Penn dissertations--History.

History--Penn dissertations.

Physical Description:

2 volumes (xii, 485 leaves) : maps ; 29 cm

Production:

[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] : University of Pennsylvania, 2015.

Summary:

This dissertation examines the causes and consequences of what I call the Time of Anarchy, a chaotic welter of interethnic wars and civil conflicts that swept across eastern North America between 1675 and 1682. The significance of this event-indeed, even its existence-has been obscured by generations of scholarly interest in Bacon's Rebellion (1676-1677), a civil war among Englishmen in Virginia. Despite the historiographical focus on Bacon's Rebellion, a multitude of other struggles unfolded at the same time, including riots in New York, insurrections in Maryland, and a revolution in Carolina, as well as an explosion of wars between Native American nations from the Great Lakes to the Deep South. I argue that these seemingly distinct conflicts were connected by the scattering of the Susquehannock Indians and their political initiatives as they sought vengeance, survival, and reconstitution. This dissertation demonstrates that Anglo-Indian conflict and colonial rebellion were mutually constitutive; each fed the other in a spiral of violence and disorder. The Susquehannocks scattered in the face of colonial aggression in late 1675, causing ripple effects on surrounding Native American communities and neighboring colonial societies, often disrupting volatile local balances of power. Grief over lost loved ones and fear of future violence propelled Anglo-Indian conflict. Colonists' fears were fed by rumors that Indian nations allied to the English were secretly in league with the Susquehannocks. When colonial governments refused to act on these rumors, popular outrage turned to conspiracy theories that linked the oligarchs who ruled an oppressive political order with known and suspected Native enemies. As a result, even after early uprisings were suppressed by military force, the wars of the Susquehannocks continued to keep colonial societies poised on the edge of insurrection for five more years. The spiral of violence, I conclude, was only interrupted when the Susquehannocks won their wars, and shaped a new continental order that brought stability to the northeast and a shattering of the southeast.

Notes:

Ph. D. University of Pennsylvania 2015.

Department: History.

Supervisor: Daniel K. Richter.

Includes bibliographical references.

OCLC:

949823828