Abraham in arms : war and gender in colonial New England / Ann M. Little.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Little, Ann M.

Series:

Early American studies.

Early American Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English--New England--History--18th century.

English.

French--New England--History--18th century.

French.

Frontier and pioneer life--New England.

Frontier and pioneer life.

Indians of North America--New England--History.

Indians of North America.

Masculinity--New England--History.

Masculinity.

Sex role--New England--History.

Sex role.

New England--Ethnic relations.

New England.

New England--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

New England--History, Military.

New England--Social conditions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (272 pages) : illustrations, maps

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In 1678, the Puritan minister Samuel Nowell preached a sermon he called "Abraham in Arms," in which he urged his listeners to remember that "Hence it is no wayes unbecoming a Christian to learn to be a Souldier." The title of Nowell's sermon was well chosen. Abraham of the Old Testament resonated deeply with New England men, as he embodied the ideal of the householder-patriarch, at once obedient to God and the unquestioned leader of his family and his people in war and peace. Yet enemies challenged Abraham's authority in New England: Indians threatened the safety of his household, subordinates in his own family threatened his status, and wives and daughters taken into captivity became baptized Catholics, married French or Indian men, and refused to return to New England. In a bold reinterpretation of the years between 1620 and 1763, Ann M. Little reveals how ideas about gender and family life were central to the ways people in colonial New England, and their neighbors in New France and Indian Country, described their experiences in cross-cultural warfare. Little argues that English, French, and Indian people had broadly similar ideas about gender and authority. Because they understood both warfare and political power to be intertwined expressions of manhood, colonial warfare may be understood as a contest of different styles of masculinity. For New England men, what had once been a masculinity based on household headship, Christian piety, and the duty to protect family and faith became one built around the more abstract notions of British nationalism, anti-Catholicism, and soldiering for the Empire. Based on archival research in both French and English sources, court records, captivity narratives, and the private correspondence of ministers and war officials, Abraham in Arms reconstructs colonial New England as a frontier borderland in which religious, cultural, linguistic, and geographic boundaries were permeable, fragile, and contested by Europeans and Indians alike.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Wars of the Northeastern Borderlands, 1636-1763

Introduction: Onward Christian Soldiers, 1678

Chapter 1. "You dare not fight, you are all one like women": The Contest of Masculinities in the Seventeenth Century

Chapter 2. "What are you an Indian or an Englishman?" Cultural Cross-Dressing in the Northeastern Borderlands

Chapter 3. "Insolent" Squaws and "Unreasonable" Masters: Indian Captivity and Family Life

Chapter 4. "A jesuit will ruin you Body & Soul!'' Daughters of New England in Canada

Chapter 5. "Who will be Masters of America The French or the English?" Manhood and Imperial Warfare in the Eighteenth Century

Epilogue: On the Plains of Abraham

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [209]-251) and index.

ISBN:

9780812202649

0812202643

OCLC:

859162337