Over the Threshold is the first in-depth work to explore the topic of intimate violence in the American colonies and the early Republic. The essays examine domestic violence in both urban and frontier environments, between husbands and wives, parents and children, and masters and slaves. This compelling collection puts commonly held notions about intimate violence under strict historical scrutiny, often producing surprising results.

This volume brings together original essays by leading historians of the Atlantic World, representing recent developments in historiography of the period. These essays present the argument that coercive imperial authority has been vastly overrated. Distance, the primacy of trade over politics, and the refusal of colonized peoples to recognize European authority resulted in de-centralized American empires.

In this innovative volume, leading historians of the early modern Americas examine the subjects of early modern, continuing colonization, and the relations between established colonies and frontiers of settlement. Their original essays about centers and peripheries in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and British America invite comparison.