This Pulitzer Prize awarded history interrogates the discovery and first settlement of the region; the genesis of the religious and political ideas which there took root and flourished; the geographic and other factors which shaped its economic development; the beginnings of that English overseas empire, of which it formed a part; and the early formulation of thought-on both sides of the Atlantic-regarding imperial problems. Contents: The American Background Staking Out Claims The Race for Empire Some Aspects of Puritanism The First Permanent Settlement New England and the Great Migration An English Opposition Becomes a New England Oligarchy The Growth of a Frontier Attempts to Unify New England Cross-Currents in the Confederacy The Defeat of the Theocracy The Theory of Empire The Reassertion of Imperial Control The Inevitable Conflict Loss of the Massachusetts Charter An Experiment in Administration The New Order