The World of Plymouth Plantation

August 10, 2020
UCLA history professor Pestana (The English Conquest of Jamaica) restores Plymouth colony to “a real place in which people lived, worked, and died,” rather than “a symbol of large, abstract concepts,” in this accessible and illuminating account. Contending that the “emphasis on firstness and uniqueness needlessly limits our understanding of the experience of these early settlers,” Pestana details the maritime trading networks that connected Plymouth to Europe and other settlements in the New World. She adds depth to many founding legends of American culture, including the Mayflower Compact (drafted as a “stopgap measure,” it took on legendary status only after the Pilgrims failed to obtain a royal charter) and Plymouth Rock (not designated as the landing site until more than a century after the colony’s founding, and by people who “conveyed an astonishing ignorance about sailing”). Other noteworthy insights concern the transient nature of Plymouth’s population, its strong fealty to the king of England, and the essential role of women’s labor. Drawing largely on 17th-century accounts, including William Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation, Pestana brings the early decades of the colony to rich and nuanced life. Readers will give thanks for this cogent study of the real people and events behind this “foundational moment” in American history.