Out of Small Beginnings: Plymouth Colony and the Making of American Liberty

FAIN: FZ-261386-18

John G. Turner
George Mason University (Fairfax, VA 22030-4444)

The writing of a book on the history of the Plymouth Colony, from its founding in 1620 to 1691.

In conjunction with the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower crossing, this book will narrate the history of Plymouth Colony during its seventy-year existence. At the center of the story are debates about the meaning and bounds of liberty, both religious and political. The inhabitants of New Plymouth--native peoples, Protestant separatists, Baptists, Quakers, and English officials--had radically different ideas about what liberty meant and who should enjoy it. While prior generations of Americans made banal connections between the Mayflower and the American founding, the history here is both more complex and more salient for twenty-first century Americans, who still disagree about the meaning and bounds of liberty.

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