Contested Continent

The newest volume in the acclaimed Oxford History of the United States series, Contested Continent recounts the origins of "America" and how it came to birth the United States.

The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. In the newest volume in the series, Peter C. Mancall recounts how North America was forged from the experiences of millions of Indigenous women and men as well as Europeans and Africans.

The first volume of the Oxford History of the United States series, Contested Continent is also the most ambitiously far-ranging history of North America concentrating on the period from c. 1000 to 1680, from the arrival of Norse explorers to an explosion of revolts that underlined the stubborn struggle to master the continent some two centuries after Columbus's landfall. This history spans the continent from the North Atlantic to the West Indies and includes the entire Atlantic basin. Mancall emphasizes the experiences of diverse peoples while, at the same time, telling a new story about the origins of major aspects of American culture. He illuminates the rise of a booming trans-Atlantic economy based on the extraction of abundant American natural resources; the central role that European migrants and their descendants played in the enslavement of Africans and the displacement of Indigenous peoples; and the spread of self-governing polities where many enjoyed religious freedom. None of these developments was inevitable. Conflicts broke out frequently as different peoples battled over precious resources. Europeans' appetites for material gain and expanding Christendom brought horrific consequences for those brutalized, enslaved, and vulnerable to infectious diseases.

This is a sweeping history of developments crucial to the eventual founding of the United States. Contested Continent underscores the titanic struggles between the peoples who had populated the Americas for centuries and the migrants from the Old World who initiated changes that created a New World that offered boundless opportunities for some and crushed the aspirations of others.

Peter C. Mancall is Distinguished Professor, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, and the Linda and Harlan Martens Director of the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute at the University of Southern California. He is the author of numerous books including Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson and Hakluyt's Promise: An Elizabethan's Obsession for an English America. His writings have appeared in the Smithsonian, Time, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among other outlets. He is a fellow of the Society of American Historians and the Royal Historical Society.