Writing Early America: From Empire to Revolution

Based on a close reading of nearly four hundred articles in leading journals published over the past decade, Trevor Burnard provides an unprecedented analysis of the direction of the field encompassed by the popular hashtag #VastEarlyAmerica. He examines scholarship on the most important areas of current research—Indigenous history, slavery and race, and gender. Burnard also demonstrates how important imperialism has become in providing a framework for colonial American history, especially for new scholarship on the American War of Independence, which historians increasingly see in its context as part of a broader Age of Revolutions.

This is the first book in over thirty years to offer advanced undergraduate and graduate students and scholars a comprehensive guide to the historiography of early America.