Colonials To Provincials

3 Pages 832 Words

The conclusion that the author of a history book comes to is directly related to the point of view with which he or she undertakes the writing. Such is the case with Jon Butler’s Becoming America: The Revolution before 1776, and Ned C. Landsman’s From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture 1680-1760. Both authors are examining the same period of time, 1680 to 1760, and most likely looked at much of the same material while researching for their respective works. Yet the two authors come to two completely different conclusions. This paper will look at the similarities between the two books, but also the differences, which led the authors to their different conclusions.
The first and most important similarity between these two books is that do deal with the same period of time 1680 to 1760. This is important to look at because of the separate conclusions that they have come to. Another similarity is that Butler and Landsman share is that they both look at the middle colonies consisting of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. This is somewhat different from many previous texts on this period, in that previous works often dealt with the New England colonies or Virginia. Both Butler and Landsman handle the issue of immigration to the colonies, however Butler and Landsman’s opinions on the effects of immigration on the colonies and colonial society differ from each other.
While Butler and Landsman examined the same period and for the most part the same geographic location. The perspective with which each author viewed the material, contributed to the two arriving at such different conclusions. It will be easiest to examine the reasons for these differing conclusions by examining each individually.
In Becoming America: The Revolution before 1776, Jon Butler has examined how Britain’s mainland colonies became the first modern society, by focusing on their Socio-Political and Economic transforma...