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The Mid-Atlantic and Beyond

The two books under review reflect the emphasis of much recent scholarship in early American history. One examines the Delaware River Valley while facing east, connecting it to the larger Atlantic world, and the other while largely looking west into Indian country. Mark L. Thompson’s study, based on his dissertation at Johns Hopkins University, is the work of a new scholar; while Daniel K. Richter’s is a collection of essays from 1983 to the present, reflecting the long career of this preeminent historian. The Contest for the Delaware Valley is a monograph on the interaction between and conflicting claims of the Dutch, Swedes, English, and Native Americans during the seventeenth century in the mid-Atlantic region. The scope of Trade, Land, Power is much broader, both in terms of geography and chronology, as it ranges from the Atlantic coast into what is now the Midwest; from the Spanish appearance in the Chesapeake in 1561 to the encounter of several Pennsylvania Quakers with Indians in 1804. Thompson ends with the optimistic view that, by 1700, various now-ethnic groups (no longer nations) had learned to peacefully coexist “in harmony and affection” in a region increasingly British. Richter presents a dismal and depressing tale of Native Americans misunderstood and mistreated for more than two centuries. And yet the two books can appropriately be considered together because they both represent the expansion of historical perspectives and what has been learned by historians in recent years. Interestingly, William Penn is an important figure for both authors. For Thompson, his arrival on the scene signifies the transition from one period to another; for Richter, he symbolizes what might have been (peace), even when this is seen as myth, or at least a goal never achieved by Penn’s sons and the settlers of Pennsylvania.