Francis Jennings – författare

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.

A distinguished historian of early America sees Franklin's influence on the course of the revolutionary movement in a new light. Benjamin Franklin was a man of genius and enormous ego, smart enough not to flaunt his superiority but to let others proclaim it. To understand him and his role in great events, one must realize the omnipresence of this ego, and the extent to which he mirrored the feelings of other colonial Pennsylvanians. With this in mind, Francis Jennings sets forth some new ideas about Franklin as the "first American." In so doing, he provides a new view of the beginnings of the American Revolution in Franklin's struggle against William Penn. By striving against Penn's feudal lordship (and therefore against King George) Franklin became master of the Pennsylvania assembly. It was in this role that he suggested a meeting of the Continental Congress which, as Jennings notes, flies in the face of historical opinion which suggests that Boston patriots had to drag Pennsylvanians into the revolution. Franklin's autobiography omits discussion of his heroic struggle against Penn and, in so doing, robs history of his true role in the making of the new country. It is through an accurate accounting of what Franklin did, not what he said he did in his autobiography (which Jennings likens to a campaign speech), that we understand the author's use of the term "first American."

Winner of the Distinguished Book Award of the Society of Colonial Wars.

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 that Europeans did not "discover" America; they invaded it and conquered its population. We grew up on history written from the point of view of the victor. Here now is the rest of the story, by the acknowledged dean of American Indian history. It is strong, eye-opening, and timely.

In the standard presentation of the American Revolution, a ragtag assortment of revolutionaries, inspired by ideals of liberty and justice, throw off the yoke of the British empire and bring democracy to the New World. In place of this fairy tale, Francis Jennings presents a realistic alternative: a privileged elite, dreaming of empire, clone their own empire from the British. This book, first published in 2000, shows that the colonists intended from the first to conquer American Indians. Though subordinate to the British crown, the colonists ruled over beaten native peoples. Some colonists bought Africans as slaves and rigidly ruled over them, and the colonists invented racial gradation to justify conquests and oppression. Jennings reveals as war propaganda the revolutionary rhetoric about liberty and virtue. Including the whole population in this meticulously documented history, Jennings provides an eloquent explanation for a host of anomalies, ambiguities, and iniquities that have followed in the American Revolution's wake.

In the standard presentation of the American Revolution, a ragtag assortment of revolutionaries, inspired by ideals of liberty and justice, throw off the yoke of the British empire and bring democracy to the New World. In place of this fairy tale, Francis Jennings presents a realistic alternative: a privileged elite, dreaming of empire, clone their own empire from the British. This book, first published in 2000, shows that the colonists intended from the first to conquer American Indians. Though subordinate to the British crown, the colonists ruled over beaten native peoples. Some colonists bought Africans as slaves and rigidly ruled over them, and the colonists invented racial gradation to justify conquests and oppression. Jennings reveals as war propaganda the revolutionary rhetoric about liberty and virtue. Including the whole population in this meticulously documented history, Jennings provides an eloquent explanation for a host of anomalies, ambiguities, and iniquities that have followed in the American Revolution's wake.

Anthropologist and preservationist Robert S. Grumet has created this up-to-date, well-written overview of historic contact with Native Americans on the colonial frontier from a vast array of documentary, archaeological, and ethnographic data never assembled before. This is a definitive history of early Indian-white relations in an area extending from Virginia to Maine and from the Atlantic coast to the upper Ohio River. It will be read by specialists and Indian-studies buffs alike.Historic Contact divides native northeastern America into three subregions where the histories of thirty-four Indian Countries are described and mapped in detail, including all National Historic Landmarks. In the North Atlantic Region are the Eastern and Western Abenaki, Pocumtuck-Squakheag, Nipmuck, Pennacook-Pawtucket, Massachusett, Wampanoag, Narragansett, Mohegan-Pequot, Montauk, Lower Connecticut Valley, and Mahican Indian Countries; in the Middle Atlantic Region, the Munsee, Delaware, Nanticoke, Piscataway-Potomac, Powhatan, Nottoway-Meherrin, Upper Potomac-Shenandoah, Virginian Piedmont, Southern Appalachian Highlands, and lower Susquehanna Indian Countries; and in the Trans-Appalachian Region, the Mohawl, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, Niagara-Erie, Upper Susquehanna, and Upper Ohio Indian Countries.Readers interested in Indian history and colonial America will value this basic reference, which originated as a National Historic landmarks Survey Theme Study. Federal agencies, state and local preservation officers, and Indian communities will use it as an excellent planning tool in making evaluations protection decisions.

This title revisits the history of American colonization. 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 seen in the cold light of material interest and naked expansion.