More Barbarous Years

Nearly six months ago I posted my thoughts about Bernard Bailyn's excellent work, The Barbarous Years: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675. You can read it here. If you don't trust my evaluation, then read Thomas Kidd's here. Kidd is a professor of history at Baylor University who specializes in the second (and more familiar) half of American Colonial history. Kidd's final sentence sums up The Barbarous Years well: "Some will find Bailyn too negative, but he certainly corrects our nostalgia for the colonists as quaint American Patriots in waiting." In other words, seventeenth century life in the British North American colonies was rough, very rough. Barbarous is not too strong a word