Crossroads of Empire

Book excerpt: This work examines colonial New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania as central to both warfare and the emerging British-Atlantic world of culture and trade. In this probing history, Ned C. Landsman demonstrates how the Middle Colonies came to function as a distinct region. He argues that while each territory possessed varying social, religious, and political cultures, the collective lands of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were unified in their particular history and place in the imperial and Atlantic worlds. Landsman shows that the societal cohesiveness of the three colonies originated in the commercial and military rivalries among Native nations and developed further with the competing involvement of the European powers. They eventually emerged as the focal point in the contest for dominion over North America. In relating this progression, Landsman discusses various factors in the region’s development, including the Enlightenment, evangelical religion, factional politics, religious and ethnic diversity, and distinct systems of Protestant pluralism. Ultimately, he argues, it was within the Middle Colonies that the question was first posed, What is the American?