Providence Island, 1630–1641
The Other Puritan Colony

Examines the failure of Providence Island, set up by English puritans in 1630 and extinct by 1641.

Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Author)

9780521558358, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 June 1995

412 pages, 4 b/w illus. 5 maps
22.7 x 15.2 x 2.7 cm, 0.67 kg

"...this account of Providence Island makes a valuable correction to the course of colonial history -- one that no historian of seventeenth-century America or England can afford to ignore." Virginia Bernhard, The Journal of Southern History

Providence Island was founded in 1630 at the same time as Massachusetts Bay by English puritans who thought an island off the coast of Nicaragua was far more promising than the cold, rocky shores of New England. Although they expected theirs to become a model godly society, the settlement never succeeded in building the kind of united and orderly community that the New Englanders created. In fact, they began large-scale use of slaves, and plunged into the privateering that invited the colony's extinction by the Spanish in 1641. As a well-planned and well-financed failure, Providence Island offers historians a standard by which to judge other colonies. By examining the failure of Providence Island, the author illuminates the common characteristics in all the successful English settlements, the key institutions without which men and women would not emigrate and a colony's economy could not thrive. This study of Providence Island reveals the remarkable similarities in many basic institutions among the early colonial regions.

List of maps
Preface
Author's note
1. The Providence Island company and its colony: the program
2. Founding a colony on Providence Island
3. Contested authority: the governorship of Captain Philip Bell
4. Frustrated hopes for economic development
5. Land and society: the middling planters
6. Servants into slaves
7. Military requirements and the people's response
8. The turbulent religious life of Providence Island
9. Governing puritan privateers: the governorships of Robert Hunt and Nathaniel Butler
10. The business history of the Providence Island company
11. The end and persistence of Providence Island
Appendixes
Biographical essay
Index.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], History of the Americas [HBJK]