TEXT A Bermard Bailyn has
recently reinterpreted the early history of the United States by applying new
social research findings on the experiences of European migrants. In his
reinterpretation, migration becomes the organizing principle for rewriting the
history of preindustrial North America. His approach rests on four separate
propositions. The first of these asserts that residents of early
modern England moved regularly about their countryside; migrating to the New
World was simply a "natural spillover". Although at first the colonies held
little positive attraction for the English -- they would rather have stayed home
-- by the eighteenth century people increasingly migrated to America because
they regarded it as the land of opportunity. Secondly, Bailyn holds that,
contrary to the notion that used to flourish in American history textbooks,
there was never a typical New World community. For example, the economic and
demographic character of early New England towns varied considerably.
Bailyn’s third proposition suggests two general patterns prevailing among
the many thousand migrants: one group came as indentured servants, another came
to acquire land. Surprisingly, Bailyn suggests that those who recruited
indentured servants were the driving forces of transatlantic migration. These
colonial entrepreneurs helped determine the social character of people who came
to preindustrial North America. At first, thousands of unskilled laborers were
recruited; by the 1730’s, however, American employers demanded skilled
artisans. Finally, Bailyn argues that the colonies were a
haft-civilized hinterland of the European culture system. He is undoubtedly
correct to insist that the colonies were part of an Anglo-American empire. But
to divide the empire into English core and colonial perphery, as Bailyn does,
devalues the achievements of colonial culture, as Bailyn claims, that high
culture in the colonies never matched that in England. But what of
seventeenth-century New England, where the settlers created effective laws,
built a distinguished university, and published books Bailyn might respond that
New England was exceptional. However, the ideas and institutions developed by
New England Puritans had powerful effects on North American culture.
Although Bailyn goes on to apply his approach to some thousands of
indentured servants who migrated just prior to the revolution, he fails to link
their experience with the political development of the United States. Evidence
presented in his work suggests how we might make such a connection. These
indentured servants were treated as slaves for the period during which they had
sold their time to American employers. It is not surprising that as soon as they
served their time they passed up good wages in the cities and headed west to
ensure their personal independence by acquiring land. Thus, it is in the west
that a peculiarly American political culture began, among colonists who were
suspicious of authority and intensely antiaristocrafic. The author of the passage would be most likely to agree with which of the following statements about Bailyn’s work
A.Bailyn underestimates the effects of Puritan thought on North American culture. B.Bailyn’s description of the colonies as part of an Anglo-American empire is misleading and incorrect. C.Bailyn failed to test his propositions on a specific group of migrants to colonial North America. D.Bailyn overemphasizes the experiences of migrants to the New England colonies, and neg lects the southern and the western parts of the New England.