The Duration of Book Credit in Colonial New England

Account books show that merchants frequently used book credit in exchanges with consumers. The ability of credit to act as a substitute for currency in payments depends on the terms attached to the credit, such as its duration. To investigate duration more systematically, the author employs life table analysis and the singulate mean age at marriage, methods commonly used in demography, to analyze debt records from eighteenth-century Connecticut and Massachusetts. He arrives at expected duration estimates in excess of those in the literature. Given the expected duration, book credit seems to be a good substitute for other forms of payment. If this is so, a major revision of literature on colonial monetary matters may be in order.     

Memsahibs’ Writings: Colonial Narratives on Indian Women

The Americas in the Spanish World Order: The Justification for Conquest in the Seventeenth Century by James Muldoon. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. Pp. xii + 239. £34.95 (hardback). ISBN 0–8122–3245–3.

The European Outthrust and Encounter. The First Phase c.1400‐c.1700: Essays in Tribute to David Beers Quinn on His 85th Birthday edited by Cecil H. Clough and P.E.H. Hair. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1994. Pp.348. £19.50 (paperback). ISBN 0–85323–229–6.

The Story of the Voyage: Sea‐Narratives in Eighteenth‐Century England by Philip Edwards. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. x + 244, illustrations. £35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–521–41301‐X.

Voyages to Hudson Bay in Search of a Northwest Passage 1741–1747. Vol. 1: The Voyage of Christopher Middleton 1741–1742 edited by William Barr and Glyndwr Williams. London: The Hakluyt Society, 1994. Pp. xii + 333, maps. £30.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–904180–36–0.

The Power of Commerce: Economy and Governance in the First British Empire by Nancy F. Koehn. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994. Pp. xiv + 239, map, illustrations. £24.95 (hardback). ISBN 0–8014–2699–5.

The Slave Trade and the Economic Development of Eighteenth‐Century Lancaster by Melinda Elder. Keele: Ryburn Publishing, 1994. Pp. 232. £25.00 (hardback). ISBN 1–85331–030–1.

Economics and the Dreamtime: A Hypothetical History by N.G. Butlin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xi + 252, maps. £40.00 (hardback); £14.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–521–43236–7; 0–521–043820–9.

John Stuart Mill and India by Lynn Zastoupil. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1994. Pp. xii + 280. £30.00 (hardback) ISBN 0–8047–2256–0.

13 chapters of a History of Belize by Assad Shoman. Belize City: Angelus Press, 1994. Pp xviii + 344, tables, maps. US $12.50. ISBN 976–8052–19–8.

’The Killing Time’: The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica by Gad Heuman. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994. Pp. xxii + 199, maps. £13.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–333–49400–8.

A Question of Labour: Indentured Immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana 1875–1917 by K.O. Laurence. Kingston: Ian Randle; and London: James Currey, 1994. Pp ix + 648. £35.00 (hardback). ISBN 978–8100–32‐X.

A History of Mozambique by Malyn Newitt. London: Hurst, 1995. Pp. xxii + 679, maps, index. £35.00 (hardback); £16.50 (paperback). ISBN 1–85065–171‐X; 1–85065–172–8.

Travellers in Africa: British Travelogues, 1850–1900 by Tim Youngs. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994. Pp. xi + 235. £35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–7190–3969‐X.

Journey to Livingstone: Exploration of an Imperial Myth by Timothy Holmes. Edinburgh: Canongate Press, 1993. Pp. xvii + 366. £17.99 (hardback). ISBN 0–86241–402–4.

The Ilberts in India, 1882–1886: An Imperial Miniature by Mary Bennett. London: British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, 76#fr1/2> Chartfield Avenue, London SW15 6HQ, 1995. Pp.xii + 204, illustrations. £9.00 (paperback). ISBN 0–907799–54‐X.

Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 by Antoinette Burton. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Pp. xi + 391. $45.00 (hardback); $16.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–8078–2161–6; 0–8078–4471–3.

The Politics of Work: Gender and Labour in Victoria 1880–1939 by Raelene Frances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xii + 267. £37.50 (hardback). ISBN 0–521–40199–2.

Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947 by Joya Chatterji. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. vi + 303, maps. £40.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–521–41128–9.

The Invention of Politics in Colonial Malaya: Contesting Nationalism and the Expansion of the Public Sphere by Anthony Milner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. vii + 328, map. £35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–521–46565–6.

The Economic Growth of Singapore: Trade and Development in the Twentieth Century by W. G. Huff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. x + 472. £50.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–521–37037‐X.

Malaysian Development: A Retrospective by Martin Rudner. Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1994. Pp. xvii + 406. $32.95 (hardback); $19.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–88629–221–2; 0–88629–220–4.

Merchant Capital and Economic Decolonization: The United Africa Company 1929–1987 by D.K. Fieldhouse. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Pp. xxviii + 832. £60.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–19–822625‐X.

British Documents on the End of Empire. Series A, Volume III: The Conservative Government and the End of Empire, 1951–57 edited by David Goldsworthy. London: HMSO, 1994.

Part I. International Relations. Pp.lxxxix + 422. £60.00. ISBN 0–11–290535–8.

Part II. Politics and Administration. Pp.xxvii + 410. £60.00. ISBN 0–11–290536–6.

Part III. Economic and Social Policies. Pp.xxviii + 422. £60.00. ISBN 0–11–290537–4.

A Republican Manifesto by John Hirst. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pp. 144. £7.99. ISBN 0–19–553649–5.

The Muddle‐Headed Republic by Alan Atkinson. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pp. 141. £7.99. ISBN 0–19–553638‐X.     

Village and community in early colonial New England

The long-standing correlation between community function and nucleated settlement form in early colonial New England is mistaken. Puritan communities were established, but new communities—often called villages in colonial records—were developed and survived quite well regardless of settlement form. As in England at the time, village meant community and community was a social web. Village status in New England provided a community with land and thus enabled the community to undertake settlement. But the social web that comprised community did not require nucleated settlement, and the dispersed settlement form that many colonists had known in England dominated the village landscape of early colonial New England.     

Futures,intimacies, animisms: Unfinished anthropologies in the twenty-first century

This essay explores recent work in future-oriented anthropology that develops emancipatory, anticipatory, multi-modal, and participatory approaches. Through critiquing hegemonic assumptions in anthropology and in Western modernity, these works evoke both present complexity and future potentiality. Ultimately, the essay explores these works as redemptive strategies for an anthropology besieged by intolerance and authoritarianism while grappling with its colonialist underpinnings.