The Saltwater Frontier
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15
Ratings1
Average rating4
"Andrew Lipman's eye-opening first book is the previously untold story of how the ocean became a "frontier" between colonists and Indians. When the English and Dutch empires both tried to claim the same patch of coast between the Hudson River and Cape Cod, the sea itself became the arena of contact and conflict. During the violent European invasions, the region's Algonquian-speaking Natives were navigators, boatbuilders, fishermen, pirates, and merchants who became active players in the emergence of the Atlantic World. Drawing from a wide range of English, Dutch, and archeological sources, Lipman uncovers a new geography of Native America that incorporates seawater as well as soil. Looking past Europeans' arbitrary land boundaries, he reveals unseen links between local episodes and global events on distant shores."--Publisher's description.
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The Saltwater Frontier is a very admirably written piece of history. Andrew Lipman presents a history of the geopolitical situation in New Netherlands and New England in the 17th century, and in a surprising breakthrough which rightfully won him the prestigious Bancroft Prize, actually made use of BOTH Dutch and English primary sources to do his research. As such Lipman is actually able to triangulate and include the perspective of the indigenous peoples of the area as well. All told, the book, with its spectacular prose, gives a vivid picture of what life on the ground (and on the sea) might have been like in 1640s Connecticut. In a relatively short 300 or so pages Lipman opens the readers eyes to the ways that the waters of the American northeast functioned themselves as a frontier that were often dominated by the indigenous peoples of the area.
