I just finished listening to the audio book Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick. This book is about the telling of the story of the pilgrims and their journey to the New World. It starts with their religious persecution in England, their escape to Holland, and their eventual journey across the Atlantic. All of that was pretty interesting, and the story is told mostly through historical accounts, but Philbrick really gives life to the characters involved. So he makes it doubly interesting.
The second part of the book is about how the pilgrims established Plymouth Plantation and how they survived their first year. It goes into deep account of how they managed relations with the Native Americans. This is where the story of the first Thanksgiving came from. From an historical perspective, this part is captivating because it takes the whole romantic notion out of story and tells it like it happened, according to journals and writings from the time.
The third part of the book talks about how more and more colonies were being created and how they were different from the Plymouth pilgrims. It showed how the more colonists that arrived increased tensions between the colonists and the Native Americans. Again this is pretty interesting because it showed how different the Puritans were from the Pilgrims despite the fact that they had similar roots. Even the societies they were trying to build in the New World were different. Their attitudes towards the Native Americans were different. It also gives us accounts of the Native Americans and what their attitudes were at the time. Often we are taught that the pilgrims just came in and treated the Native Americans unfairly, but it would seem that they were not entirely blameless on events. The Native Americans had their own political interests, and there was always jockeying for power among the Sachums and Tribes.
The fourth part of the book is probably the most interesting, especially if you like drawing ties from the past to the present. This part of the book centered around King Philip’s War. Philip was the son of the greatest Indian ally to the pilgrims. He distrusted all of the English colonists and wanted to consolidate all of the Indian tribes under his control and destroy all of the English. Again the story is told mostly through first hand accounts of the war. One of the most interesting things that I learned was how great the death toll was from this war. In comparison, during WWII the U.S. lost about 1% of its male population, during the Civil War (the highest actual number of casualties in any war the U.S. has been in) the U.S. lost about 4-5% if its male population. During the relatively short period of King Philip’s war, the colonies lost 8% of its male population. Simply stunning.
All in all I thought this was a well-written historical book. It has all of the key players at the time, WIlliam Bradford, John Church, John Smith, Miles Standish, Mary Rowlandson. I think that there are direct comparisons that can be made between that period of our history, and areas of the world right now (specifically the Middle East). I think if you are a history buff, you will like this book. I would especially recommend the audio version. George Guidall narrates and does a most excellent job.
Bernie