New England Bound

Wendy Warren's "New England Bound" fundamentally reframes the narrative of colonial America by revealing the integral role of slavery in New England's founding and development. Rather than treating slavery as a peripheral Southern institution, Warren demonstrates how the "free" colonies of the North were deeply dependent on enslaved labor from their earliest days. Through meticulous archival research, she traces the connections between Puritan settlements and the Atlantic slave trade, showing how profits from slavery financed colonial expansion and how enslaved people built the infrastructure of what would become America's moral and intellectual centers. The book challenges the comfortable myth of Northern moral superiority by documenting how Massachusetts Bay Colony residents actively participated in slave trading, owned enslaved people, and structured their economy around unfree labor. Warren's scholarship is particularly significant for its methodological approach—she recovers voices and experiences that traditional colonial histories have marginalized or ignored entirely. This Pulitzer Prize finalist offers essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how slavery shaped all of early America, not just the plantation South, making it impossible to separate the story of American freedom from the reality of American bondage.

Wendy Warren's "New England Bound" exposes the deeply embedded role of slavery in colonial New England's economy and culture. Readers consistently praise Warren's accessible yet rigorous scholarship that challenges the common misconception that the North was less complicit in slavery than the South. Liked: - Warren examines both African and Native American enslavement comprehensively - Accessible writing style makes complex historical analysis engaging for general readers - Demonstrates how New England's economy was fundamentally built on slave labor - Shows strong research connecting New England to broader Atlantic slave trade Disliked: - Frustrating gaps in historical record leave many enslaved individuals' stories incomplete - Dense material can be challenging despite the accessible writing style - Limited documentation means many "little people" remain largely unknowable Readers found this an eye-opening corrective to sanitized historical narratives about Northern slavery, though some wished more personal stories of the enslaved could be recovered.

These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore - Like Warren, Lepore excavates the founding contradictions of American democracy, revealing how slavery and freedom were entangled from the very beginning. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn - Zinn's groundbreaking work shares Warren's commitment to centering the experiences of the enslaved and marginalized in early American history. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi - Kendi traces the intellectual architecture of racism with the same scholarly rigor Warren applies to colonial New England's economic dependence on slavery. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein - Rothstein's meticulous documentation of state-sanctioned segregation complements Warren's revelation of how colonial governments systematically enabled slavery. Gender and the Politics of History by Joan Wallach Scott - Scott's foundational work in feminist historiography offers the methodological sophistication that readers will recognize in Warren's careful attention to women's roles in the slave economy. An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz - Ortiz provides the broader continental perspective that extends Warren's New England focus, showing how racialized labor systems shaped all of North America. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward Baptist - Baptist's economic analysis of slavery's role in American development provides the perfect companion to Warren's regional study. Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr. - Though focused on the 20th century, this work shares Warren's attention to how grassroots resistance movements challenged established narratives about American freedom.

• Warren spent over a decade researching in archives across New England and the Caribbean to uncover previously overlooked records of enslaved people's lives. • The work builds on and challenges the foundational scholarship of Bernard Bailyn and Edmund S. Morgan, two giants of colonial American history. • Warren discovered that by 1700, enslaved people made up nearly 20% of Boston's population, a proportion rarely acknowledged in traditional New England histories. • The book has been praised by historians like Annette Gordon-Reed and has fundamentally influenced how colonial history is taught in universities across the country.