Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War

Another great book by Nathaniel Philbrick. I read his In The Heart of the Sea...5 stars...see my review.Mayflower reads very well with lots of action. Its 462 pages plus some B/W pictures of some of the people,maps, equipment and places told about in this book. There is a huge amount of notes and a great bibliography where readers can get more information. The actual reading of the book is 361 pages. It reads fast. I read it in a little over 2 days. This is a great book..just look at the almost 200 five star ratings on Amazon!In high school history I had a one day lesson, a little about the Mayflower, the Pilgrims and Puritans and some of the New England Indian tribes of the early to mid 1600s. Just a speck of history.Nathaniel Philbrick goes much, much deeper into the Mayflower and the different Pilgrims and Puritans and many more Indian tribes and the Mayflower Compact. We see the Pilgrims trying to get religious freedom in the new world, yet not being open to other religions. We see the differences in the Puritan, Pilgrims and Quakers and how they really did not get along very well due to differences in religion and how each were governed. We see the different crops planted by the native Americans. lobstering, catching of game, and fishing to survive. Also the role of using Herring fish as fertilizer is shown. The Governors of Plymouth and the military commanders are shown.Also the King Philip war is shown and the eventual killing of the menacing "Indian King" King Philip. Also the great deeds of Benjamin Church in the Indian wars who was a believer of allowing the use of friendly Indians to help fight against the warrior attacking Indian tribes rather than Captain Samuel Mosley who believed the only good Indian was a dead Indian. We see the many massacres of both whites and Indians.Also how the Indians actually did save the starving original Pilgrims with their corn, game, fish and lobster as the crops the pilgrims had planted did not do well in the new world, as it was very late in the year and cold. The Pilgrims would of starved to death. We see the huge death toll from disease and little food of the original Pilgrims and the massive percentage of New England colony people killed and Indians killed in the Indian Wars.( over 8% and up to 80% respectfully) A much greater percent of the population killed than the Civil War or any of the wars the US later had.I won't ruin the book with more description. Just say there is much, much more. There is probably tid bits of information you never heard about or information with a differnt slant than taught in school.A fantastically well researched book, rich in description and action. Mayflower 5 stars and recommended. I liked Nathaniel Philbrick's In The Heart of the Sea and Mayflower so much I bought his books... Sea of Glory and the Last Stand and will review.

This book took me a long time to read. It's so well researched that there is information to absorb on every page. I was fascinated. The story of the Pilgrims described by the author goes far beyond what I ever imagined and certainly gave me a really thorough understanding about the truth of the voyage and settlement that most Americans think of as the beginning of our country. The year 1620 was a long time ago. It was another world from what we know today. And it certainly did take a lot of courage for the small group of Pilgrims who set off to an unknown world. They had their faith to sustain them, of course. And a trust in what they were doing. Because they were having such a hard time in England, they had set up their settlement in Holland where there was more religious tolerance at the time. But they saw that their children were becoming Dutch and they wanted to go someplace where they could still be English.After a difficult voyage they arrived in the Cape Cod area of America and later moved a bit more inland. At that time, the Indians had just gone through a period of awful disease, later believed to be viral hepatitis which they caught from French sailors. More than 90 percent of the native population succumbed to this disease and the Pilgrims found areas where crops had been cultivated that had been abandoned. They stole some corn from a gravesite because they were so hungry and later had to deal with the Indians about this. But at first there was a truce of sorts and the Indians did help out the people.I hesitate to use the term "the Indians" though. There were a lot of tribes, and some were historic enemies of each other. And so there were constant clashes and treaties as these tribes fought each other and changed alliances with the Pilgrims. Most of the Pilgrims did not survive that first winter, but later more settlers came from England and the colony grew. So did the warfare with the Indians. Eventually, there was an extremely bloody war. Both sides were guilty of atrocities. Both sides felt they were right. The rest, as they say, is history.While I read the book I felt I was right there, in the 17th century, a fly on the wall watching the various groups destroy each other. The author made me understand the challenges for each of these groups, but I must say I felt most sorry for the Indians, who eventually lost the war and whose way of life was destroyed forever."Mayflower" is non-fiction all the way. It did NOT read like a novel. That is its strength as well as its weakness I can only absorb a limited number of facts before I tend to get sleepy. I think the book belongs on history shelves and will stand the test of time as a fine historical document. I recommend it as fresh way to view America's beginnings. I'm glad I read it. But it is not for everyone.

Good history

History is at its most potent when the lessons of yesterday flow naturally into today. Here, brilliantly constructed, is a river of resonance. We have warlords and constantly shifting alliances, treachery, bribery, bungling. We have religious extremism, racial hatred, military carnage and cover-ups. This could be Afghanistan or Iraq, as bloodily relevant as the latest roadside bomb. Instead, across four centuries, Nathaniel Philbrick offers us the New England of the Mayflower pilgrims, the benign myths that helped shape modern America and what really happened.Sign up to our Bookmarks newsletter He tells two essential tales separated by the moral corrosion of 50 years. The first, often inspiring in its fortitude, sees a young corduroy worker called William Bradford help lead his Puritan flock from exile in the Netherlands to the promise of Plymouth Rock. These settlers die in huge numbers from starvation and disease. Only a friendship forged with the Pokanoket Indians and their chief, Massasoit, gives them hope, then prosperity. But the one, over time, kills the other.In the beginning, the Indians trade and prosper as partners. Too soon, though, the market in furs changes and they have nothing left to sell except their land, which means the ability to feed themselves. Gradually, they become hungrier, poorer, more desperate while the second generation of Mayflower pilgrims and the sons of the 'Strangers' who came with them - religious asylum seekers and economic migrants thrust together on a single ship - look on with mounting scorn. Massasoit's son, Wamsutta, is chief now and vows that no more land will be sold. He dies in suspicious circumstances and his young brother, Philip, seeks a policy that may see his tribe survive. But the white men see no point in helping him. They stumble into the slaughter called 'King Philip's War'.What follows is sometimes unbearably tragic. In 15 months - from May 1675 to August 1676 - Plymouth Colony sees 8 per cent of its men fall in battle, almost double the Civil War killing rate. And a Native American population that once totalled 20,000 counts 2,000 lost in battle, 3,000 dead of sickness and starvation, 1,000 shipped away as slaves and 2,000 more doomed to wander far afield in search of a new home. The casualties and the aftermath are brutal.Worse, brutality consumes both sides as they struggle for supremacy. Take the 'Great Swamp Fight' that later American writers hailed as 'one of the most glorious victories ever achieved in our history'. But 200 English troops, out of a thousand, are dead or wounded; and perhaps 600 men, women and children from the Narrangansett tribe are burnt to death in the remnants of the fort they built as security against being dragged into the Pokanokets' war. English 'intelligence' wasn't up to deducing that, however. It predicted an attack which never came and mindlessly drove what was left of the Narrangansett to take King Philip's side.ADVERTISEMENTinRead invented by TeadsAdvertisementWe are in an echo chamber of horrors here. Who do the English, with their old flintlock guns and creaking European battlefield routines, remind you of? Where did the Indians get the guns they used to such surprising effect? (Yes, from English arms dealers). Who does the bedraggled figure of Philip himself, left roaming the wilderness with only handful of supporters by his side yet still possessing a famed power to inspire, bring to mind somewhere on the Hindu Kush?Philbrick develops none of these parallels himself, but his gift for understanding, for shrewd humanity, makes the process natural and inevitable. This is more than a small, forgotten war in the first days of America's development. It is a case study in folly, fear and ignorance.The Native Americans helped the earliest of the pilgrims survive. They became wise friends, not enemies. Forgetfulness pushed them to extremes and almost annihilated them, yet, in the decisive encounters that finally destroyed this rebellion, it was other, loyal Indians who tipped the balance. Read the lessons and wince. Maybe today, on one estimate, there are more than 35 million descendants of those Mayflower pilgrims living in America. It's good that they can read this enthralling, scholarly book and know where they came from: with pride, but also, like all of us, with the pain of self-recognition. Read more

Thanks

I ordered this book by Philbrick after enjoying "In the Heart of the Sea" so much and so far "Mayflower" is also fascinating. He really explains the Pilgrams (or rather "Separatists") religious beliefs and how they motivated their every every action.Just moving to Leiden, Netherlands was a momental task for these people who had never before travelled outside of their small rural corner of England before.But then to set off for America were no English colony had ever been successful, (except for the commercial project at Jamestown– where they suffered horrendous loss), shows their religious devotion and determination.But this isn't a book just singing the praises of the Pilgrims, he spends most of the book looking at the years FOLLOWING, during King Philip's War, where the Native American's and the Colonists turn on each other.Fair minded, well-documented and very read-able.

...che i pii pellegrini del Mayflower si comportasssero così. Un libro profondo che rivela molte cose ed entra nella vita quotidiana dei prmordi dell'America del Nord. Una lettura indispensabile per capire ANCHE gli Stati Uniti di oggi.