Volume 1 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations documents the lives and experiences of everyday people through the lens of human movement and mobility from 1400 to 1800. Focusing on the most important typologies of preindustrial global migrations, this volume reveals how these movements transformed global paths of mobility, the impacts of which we still see in societies today. Case studies include those that arose from the demand for free, forced, and unfree labor, long- and short-distance trade, rural/urban displacement, religious mobility, and the rise of the number of refugees worldwide. With thirty chapters from leading experts in the field, this authoritative volume is an essential and detailed study of how migration shaped the nature of global human interactions before the age of modern globalization.

Puritan New England was not isolated from other European empires. It sat between the colonies of New Netherland and New France and, thanks to New Englanders’ participation in the broader English culture of anti-Catholicism, was acutely conscious of Spain’s presence in America. Rivalries and relations with these different European colonies, as well as their Indigenous allies, left their mark on New England literature. Even though few of those nonpuritan peoples ever visited New England, captivity narratives, anti-Catholic polemics, criticisms of the Dutch, praise for the Huguenot victims of French Catholicism, and fear and suspicion of the Anglican establishment they had left behind in England testify to the ways that the broader world figured in New England culture. A closer look at some of the sources generated by the encounter with their various North American neighbors also points to the diversity within New England. Paying attention to the frontiers, away from the cultural center around Boston, it becomes clear that there was no complete agreement on how to respond to the non-English peoples across the border. These connections highlight how New England was both part of the wider English world as well as a distinct subculture within it.