Fear and the shaping of early American societies / edited by Lauric Henneton, L.H. Roper.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Adjusting to fear in early America / Lauric Henneton -- From sea monsters and savages to sorcerers and Satan : a history of fear in New France / Leslie Choquette -- Fortune's frowns and the finger of God : deciphering fear in the Caribbean (c. 1600-c. 1720) / Sarah Barber -- Fear and the genesis of the English Empire in America / L.H. Roper -- Fear, uncertainty, and violence in the Dutch colonization of Brazil (1624-1662) / Mark Meuwese -- Rumors, uncertainty and decision-making in the greater Long Island Sound (1652-1654) / Lauric Henneton -- "Our fears surpass our hopes" : Virginian reactions to the execution of Charles I (1649-1652) / David L. Smith -- "Fourty thousand to cutt the Protestants throats": the Irish threat in the Chesapeake and the West Indies (1620-1700) / Elodie Peyrol-Kleiber -- "Imprisoning persons at their pleasure" : the anti-Catholic hysteria of 1689 in the Middle Colonies / David William Voorhees -- "A bloody conspiracy" : race, power and religion in New York's 1712 slave insurrection / Anne-Claire Faucquez -- Fear and the making of a Huguenot identity (1685-1750) / Susanne Lachenicht -- "A land where hunger is in gold and famine is in opulence" : plantation slavery, island ecology, and the fear of famine in the French Caribbean / Bertie Mandelblatt -- "The inhabitants of the province had been frequently alarmed" : fear and rumor in the colonial Southeastern Backcountry (1754-1765) / Christopher Vernon -- "The unpleasing part of the drama" : fear, devastation, and the civilian experience of the Revolutionary War / Benjamin L. Carp.

"Fear and the Shaping of Early American Societies is the first collection of essays to argue that fear permeated the colonial societies of 17th- and 18th-century America and to analyse its impact on the political decision-making processes from a variety of angles and locations. Indeed, the thirteen essays range from Canada to the Chesapeake, from New England to the Caribbean and from the Carolina Backcountry to Dutch Brazil. This volume assesses the typically American nature of fear factors and the responses they elicited in a transatlantic context. The essays further explore how the European colonists handled such challenges as Indian conspiracies, slave revolts, famine, 'popery' and tyranny as well as werewolves and a dragon to build cohesive societies far from the metropolis"--Provided by publisher.