"The past has always been elusive: how can we understand people whose worlds were utterly different from our own without imposing our own standards and hindsight? What did things feel like in the moment when outcomes were uncertain? How can we recover the uncertainties of the past, before the outcomes were known? What kind of imagination goes into the writing of transformative history? Are there latent trends that distinguish the kinds of history we now write? How unique was North America among the far-flung peripheries of the early British empire?" --From publisher's website.
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages [261]-297) and index.
Contents
Considering the slave trade : history and memory -- Context in history -- Three trends in modern history -- History and the creative imagination -- The losers -- Thomas Hutchinson in context : The ordeal revisited -- England's cultural provinces : Scotland and America (co-authored with John Clive) -- Peopling the peripheries -- The search for perfection : Atlantic dimensions.
