"No historian surpasses Francis Jennings in uncovering the seamier intrigues that brought wealth and power to some of our colonial forebears. Here is the secret history of an egomaniacal Benjamin Franklin's ruthless pursuit of political dominance in pre-Revolutionary Pennsylvania--a fascinating follow-up to Jenning's fine works on colonial Indian affairs." --Anthony F. C. Wallace

The second part of the Covenant Chain trilogy, this work reinterprets early American history especially with regard to the Iroquois nation. The other two volumes in the series are The Invasion of America and Empire of Fortune.

Empire of Fortune focuses on the so-called "French and Indian War"--the bitter last-ditch struggle between the British and the French empires in the New World. Challenging traditional historians, Francis Jennings reveals in absorbing detail the political and military realities behind the myths.

Jennings describes the experience of the first pioneers of the North American continent, who migrated from Siberia across what is now Beringia nomadic people who traveled over the continents and islands of the Americas, establishing networks of trails and trade and adapting the land to human purposes. He tells of the rise of imperial city states in Mexico and Peru, and of the extension of cultures from Mexico into North America; he describes the multitude of cultures and societies created by the Native Americans, from simple kin-structured bands to immense and complex cities. Jennings shows...

In the standard presentation of the American Revolution, a ragtag assortment of revolutionaries, inspired by the ideals of liberty and justice, rise to throw off the yoke of the British empire and bring democracy to the New World. It makes a pretty story. Now, in place of this fairytale standing in for history, Francis Jennings presents a realistic alternative: a privileged elite, dreaming of empire, clone their own empire from the British. Jennings shows that colonies were extensions from Britain intended from the first to conquer American Indians. Though subordinate to the British crown, in...

This volume is an interdisciplinary guide to the Treaties of the Six Nations and their league. It provides a description of the earliest recorded treaties and an alphabetical list of persons involved in Iroquois treaty making.

The third volume of the "Covenant Chain" trilogy, this work restores the Indians to the history of colonial America as human beings and shatters the myth of their savagery. It also revises the popular images of Wolfe and Montcalm.

In this iconoclastic book, Francis Jennings recasts the story of American colonization as a territorial invasion. The traditional history of early America paints the colonies as a transplantation of European culture to a new continent--a "virgin land" in which Native Americans were assigned the role of foil whose main contribution was to stimulate the energy and ingenuity of European dispossessors. Jennings rejects this ideology and examines the relationships between Europeans and Indians from a far more critical point of view. Shorn of old mythology and rationalizations, Puritan actions are...