This week I'm reading Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery by Margaret Ellen Newell. The book explores the largely forgotten history of Native American slavery in New England, as well as how the legal precedents established in New England influenced the later development of race-based chattel slavery throughout the English Atlantic.

By way of introduction, Massachusetts became the first colony to legalize slavery in 1641, and the quest for Indian labor helped spur the total war doctrine used during the Pequot War, King Phillip's War, and the wars against the Wabanaki north of Boston. Captives from those conflicts were forced into servitude in New England, or sold to plantations in the Caribbean, or used on naval galleys in the Mediterranean, or even used to build fortifications in Morocco. The use of total war would influence further English-Native American interactions as colonists gradually spread from the Atlantic coast, and would later shape U.S. Indian policy after the Revolution.

As Newell demonstrates, Native American captives occupied a difficult space in New England. While indigenous captives/servants/slaves were found throughout Massachusetts towns and villages they had none of the legal protections offered to indentured English servants. Neither were they obviously outsiders subject to enslavement like the small, but growing, population of African slaves imported to the northern colonies. The debate over the status of Indian slaves, their terms of service, the freedom of their children, and their rights to be sold outside of the colony were complex and evolving as the Atlantic world satiated it's labor demands on the backs of slaves, both African and Native American. In New England the colonial legislatures

made slavery personal, in that they left it to the individuals involved and to the local community and local police power to define and negotiate who was a slave and who was not.

Newell argues this complexity and flexibility in Indian slavery allowed for a variety of interactions not always possible in the Carolinas, or Bermuda, or Barbados. In New England this interaction gave rise to a hybrid society where status, both English and Native American, was negotiated through the interaction of masters and servants.

If you are interested in early colonial history, the history of Native American slavery, or the history of the development of African slavery in the Americas I recommend this book. That said, something about Newell's writing style is slightly frustrating and makes this a challenging read. I really want to like this book, the subject is fascinating and vitally important to understanding Native American history in New England, but the author seems like she is always one step away completely explaining her conclusions. When discussing the legal, social, and cultural precedents that allowed for the enslavement of entire races of people, and eventually dictated English/colonial policy toward Native Americans for centuries, one wants the author to be explicitly clear. This is a good book with a priceless bibliography/notes section to plunder, but it isn't an easy read.

Not a history book, but a piece of historical fiction which perfectly demonstrates African cultures prior to and at the beginning of British colonialism—Things Fall Apart.

I've recently been taking a look at a lot of the advancements in globalization and how the process has affected cultural and societal institutions (especially since the rise to dominance of western European powers). Things Fall Apart demonstrates the societal structures of the West African Igbo people and their responses to the British colonialism—it also shows perfectly that sometimes we can look to novels and narratives beyond simple nonfictional historical texts for when we want to see cultural commentary.

Book request!

I was only a few years old when the Bosnian war happened, and the recent indictment of Radovan Karadzic made me realise I don't know much about it. Can anyone recommend a book or two on it, preferably in English?

Also, I picked up The Everyday Life of the Pagan Celts, by Anne Ross, in a used book shop awhile ago. Anyone happen to know how reliable of a source it is?

Started reading The Hard Hand of War for my Civil War course, and I have some apprehension going in. We picked through the introduction in class, and I'm not sure I initially buy his contention that it was only through 'hard war' policies that the Union won; the way I see it, they could probably have won it just fine through conventional military means, without bringing the war to southern civilians. Interested to see how he supports his thesis going forward, though!