JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . The MIT Press and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. , 1970) 329 pp. $7.95For nearly three-quarters of a century the colonial history of New England has been organized around a single dominant theme: the erosion of traditional English institutions, customs, and ideas by the corrosive force of the American wilderness. For the intellectual as much as for the social historian, for Perry Miller no less than for Frederick Jackson Turner, the theme of disintegration, of declension, provided a generalization that was at once elemental in its force, striking in its simplicity, and nationalistic in its impact. The story was simply told: Medieval Englishmen of peasant stock and deep religious beliefs came to the New World intent upon transplanting a traditional communal society to new soil; instead, they were transformed by the American environment. A new type of society was created as the culture of the past was rendered irrelevant by the primitive logic of necessity, and as the constricting social and psychological bonds of the pre-modern world were dissolved by the corrosive forces of nature. This long silent revolution took an explicitly political form in the war for independence, itself the logical culmination of a century and a half of social change. James A. Henretta is the author of Salutary Neglect: Colonial Administration Under the Duke of Newcastle, 1724-1754 (Princeton, forthcoming), and has taught history at the University of Sussex and Princeton University. He wishes to thankJames M. Banner, Jr. for his comments on an earlier draft of this essay. Bernard Bailyn suggested the concept of a "social morphology" but should not be held responsible for the way this theme is developed here. , 1970) 329 pp. $7.95For nearly three-quarters of a century the colonial history of New England has been organized around a single dominant theme: the erosion of traditional English institutions, customs, and ideas by the corrosive force of the American wilderness. For the intellectual as much as for the social historian, for Perry Miller no less than for Frederick Jackson Turner, the theme of disintegration, of declension, provided a generalization that was at once elemental in its force, striking in its simplicity, and nationalistic in its impact. The story was simply told: Medieval Englishmen of peasant stock and deep religious beliefs came to the New World intent upon transplanting a traditional communal society to new soil; instead, they were transformed by the American environment. A new type of society was creat...
