Silent Partners - Historical Representation in William Bradford's "Of Plymouth Plantation"

Silent Partners: Historical Representation in William Bradford's "Of Plymouth Plantation"
Author(s): David Read

Source: Early American Literature, Vol. 33, No. 3 (1998), pp. 291-314
Published by: University of North Carolina Press
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SILENT PARTNERS
Historical Representation inWilliam
Bradford's Of PlymouthPlantation
DAVID READ
UniversityofMissouri- Columbia
William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation remains both one of

themost and one of the least readable texts from early colo
nial New England. Bradford receives praise for his unusually
personal and varied style, his humor, his talent for balancing piety and
as for the contributions of Brad
pragmatism; for these reasons, as well
ford's book to a particular form of American mythology, Of Plymouth
Plantation ismore often studied and taught than theworks of Bradford's
near-contemporaries in theMassachusetts Bay Colony. Yet it is a difficult
work?difficult to read from end to end and difficult to as
comprehend
a whole. It hovers between and memoir, public and
uneasily history pri
vate discourse, theological and secular narrative; its relation to genre is
no very
always in question, since itoffers precise fitwith most of the con
ventional categories. The prevailing critical view appears to be that it is a
providentialist history gone awry, that themuch longer Second Book re
flects Bradford's disappointment at the gradual dissolution of the Pilgrim
community and the loss of its original mission. Robert Daly's remark is
typical: "Bradford's history," he says, "begins magnificently, diminishes
into a tedious account of unsorted administrative details, and ends, un
completed, in silence" (557).1The loose narrative structures and convoluted
digressions of the annals are thus (so the argument goes) a form of mime
sis, depicting not only the community's decline from an ideal which is
presented with great passion and force in the First Book, but Bradford's
cumulative disquiet and bewilderment as a witness to and participant in
that decline. Several of Bradford's readers, including David Levin, Alan
Howard, and Walter Wenska, have argued eloquently in defense of Brad
ford's method in the Second Book, but the shadow of the earlier inter
over these efforts as well, for
pretation falls theymainly defend Bradford
against the charge that formuch of that book he is not writing very good
an extent
providentialist history. Howard, Levin, and to Wayne Franklin
(see esp. 165-78) represent the "Augustinian" school of Bradfordian criti
cism, inwhich Bradford is portrayed as deeply conscious, sometimes to the
291

292 Early American Literature, Volume 33,1998
point of melancholy, of the incapacity of sinful humanity to fulfillGod's

purposes on Earth; the Second Book then becomes an inquiry into this very
on the same strand in suggesting that the
incapacity. Mark Sargent draws
constitutes a
body of Bradford's history "quiet confession" of the tensions
within the separatist movement (408), tensions which had become more
poignant due to the sea-change inEnglish attitudes toward separatism fol
lowing the Civil War, and which Bradford tried to address more fruitfully
in his lateDialogues. But all such readings assume that providential design
looms in the background of the Second Book, functioning as a spiritual
and moral benchmark even ifhumanity fails tomove toward it.2
In this essay, which will proceed from a comparative look at the First
Book to the consideration of several features (as well as persons) of the
Second, and include a side-glance at an important factor in the historical
background of the Pilgrims' activities, Iwill argue that the case I have out
lined above has been greatly overstated?that in the Second Book Bradford
is not actually attempting to write providential history.3 The impatience
that Bradford's readers frequently betray with the Second Book seems to
arise from a misapprehension of one of itsmost obvious features, a fea
ture that one of my students summed up quite aptly when he called Of
Plymouth Plantation "a New England Bleak House"4 It is an account, that
is, of a complicated, difficult, inconclusive business enterprise carried out
over a
period of many years. Its intrinsic interest is in the details and in
trigues of that business and its effects on the community inwhich itwas
transacted. John Griffith, one of only a few critics to pay close attention to
Bradford's preoccupation with commerce, believes that this preoccupation
affects the style of the book in a more general way: "Bradford's work dis
tills a great part of human affairs into a kind of semi-explicit bookkeeping,
inwhich assets areweighed against liabilities with an eye primarily toward
the total balance" (235). Griffith wants to absorb Bradford's economic
concerns into another type of a
providentialist reading, involving quasi
Weberian of More if also more
triumph godly capitalism. conservatively
Kenneth Hovey perceives in the "mundane and practical character"
subtly,
of the Second Book a demonstration of the notion that, "[i]n a world de
void ofmiracles, God can still be seen in the success of weak means" (64,
61). But to describe Bradford as yet another apologist for either a "hard"
or a "soft" Protestant work ethic is to neglect the characteristic uneasiness
of the Second Book's organization and tone. The Second Book does man
age to provide moments of reflection on theways of Providence; however,
thesemoments cannot be extrapolated to form a satisfactory providential
ist reading of thewhole. Bradford seems quite aware that the providential
istperspective is not well-suited to thematerial at hand; themost obvious
evidence for this is his presentation of this material in annalistic form,
convenient formarking the exigencies and discontinuities of worldly time

Historical Representation inOf Plymouth Plantation 293
but not for observing the serene progression of "cosmic" time towards
the Apocalypse.5 Accounts of the vagaries of commercial activity rarely
make for rewarding reading as evidence of God working out His plan in
human history; hence the conclusion that the Second Book is both disap
pointed and disappointing. But thismay only indicate the disappointment
of readers at encountering the inapplicability of a favored thesis.
Iwill instead propose that themain problem confronting Bradford, and
consequently Bradford's readers, in the Second Book of Of Plymouth Plan
tation is one which is endemic to thewriting of secular history in a colonial
setting, and could be considered a problem of modern history in general.
This is the problem of describing what might be called "corporate life,"
accounting for a collective entity and for the passage of that entity through
time, as well as through an unfamiliar landscape inwhich the boundaries
and interior relations of particular kinds of European communal lifehave
to be defined anew in the face of unusual pressures from both without and
within. Bradford as historian must adjudicate between an account that em
phasizes the entity, the body politic of the Plymouth colony (a body with
an can be
implied interior lifewhich represented metonymically through
the lives of its individual members), and an account that emphasizes the
outward activity of the entity,which extends beyond the entity itself and
takes on a lifeof its own, though often in a much less "personal" and easily
accessible sense. It is the character of this other "life," and Bradford's re
sponse to it, that Iwill try to explore in the discussion that follows. First,
though, Iwant to consider inmore detail the conventional understanding
of the First Book as a benchmark of providentialist historiography.
PROVIDENTIALISM AND HISTORICAL

FORM IN THE FIRST BOOK
The problem of describing Plymouth's corporate life appears not toweigh

very heavily on Bradford in the First Book, which ismore unified and uni
form, and certainly more self-assured, in its presentation of a community
gathering itself together "into a church estate, in the fellowship of the gos
pel, towalk in all His ways made known, or to be made known unto them,
according to their best endeavours, whatsoever it should cost them, the
Lord assisting them. And that it cost them something this ensuing history
will declare" (Bradford 9; unless otherwise noted, page numbers for Of
Plantation are taken from the 1952 edition annotated
Plymouth by Samuel
Eliot Morison). As this last sentence suggests, the evidence of narrative de
sign is fairly obvious in the First Book. Bradford orders his material not
only chronologically but ideologically, into chapters that are organized
as well as in terms of sequences of events, and he indicates in nu
topically
merous ways that his
history is plotted and moving toward a particular

outcome. He alludes to his "intendment" (8) and to his (sometimes un

tomanage and prune his not my
successful) efforts ample material: "it is
purpose to treat of the several passages that befell this people whilst they
thus lived in the Low Countries (which might worthily require a large trea
tise of itself), but to make way to show the beginning of this plantation,
which is that I aim at" (19). He also offers a general rationale for his pro
cedures: "I have been the larger in these things, and so shall crave leave
in some like passages following (though in other things I shall labour to
be more contract) that their children may see with what difficulties their
fatherswrestled in going through these things in their first beginnings....
As also that some use may be made hereof in after times by others in such
likeweighty employments" (46). Inmaking this claim for the utility?both
retrospective and prospective?of his history, Bradford assumes that his
a
material forms whole, bounded if not altogether complete, and that it
is capable of taking a lasting shape. The Second Book, of course, can be
understood as belying these very assumptions.
Yet the qualitative shift from one part of the history to the other is not
as the evidence of designedness in the First Book
quite as thoroughgoing
and the lack of such evidence in the Second would seem to indicate. Brad
ford'smethod in the First Book appears to fit the providential model well in
the sense that the "good form" and clear emplotment of the history reflects
the form of God's plan for the Pilgrims; there is an implied ratio between
logical narrative and inevitable cosmic progression. On the other hand,
good form (as Hayden White has often argued6) is a common feature of
secular history as well, and can be matched with other kinds of progression
besides the providential. Even the historical accounts in the Bible, surely
the authoritative text for Bradford on matters of narrative as on most other
matters, often lack a strong pr?videntialist impulse. There could hardly be
a starker tonal contrast in the Old Testament than between the relentless
triumphalism of the Book of Joshua and themurky account of interethnic
two books together describe a
politics in the Book of Judges, though these
continuous period in the history of Canaan.7 And the chronological long
marches of the books of Kings and Chronicles do not reveal much sense
of an overarching divine plan when read outside of a broader scriptural
context. This is to say that Bradford as a writer of providential history is
not bound by an ironclad definition of "the providential historian." There
are sections in the First Book, for instance in the description of the practi
cal preparations for the journey toNew England in chapters 5-7, that are
as mundane as any similar material in the Second Book. In these sections
the pr?videntialist rhetoric largely disappears, though itmay surface occa
sionally in the letters from John Robinson and other writers that Bradford
as part of the
interpolates history.
Where such rhetoric reaches its highest pitch in the First Book is, strik

ingly enough, in those parts of the narrative inwhich the Pilgrims are not
transacting any business. Typically, these parts involve embarking upon,
being on board, or disembarking from a ship.When the community is lit
at sea, its status as an economic entity is
erally temporarily suspended until
it reaches land once again. The fact of the community's isolation from its
external relations, along with the sense of peril normally associated with
ocean voyages in this period, provides Bradford with a kind of generic cue
to
intensify the theological and typological content of his account. This
occurs in the
description of the "fearful storm" that the first group of emi
grants encountered on theway toHolland:
But when man's hope and help wholly failed, the Lord's power and
mercy appeared in their recovery.... When thewater ran into their
mouths and ears and themariners cried out, "We sink,we sink!" they
cried (ifnot with miraculous, yetwith a great height or degree of divine
faith), 'Yet Lord Thou canst save! Yet Lord Thou canst save!' with
such other expressions as Iwill forbear. Upon which the ship did not
only recover, but shortly after the violence of the storm began to abate,
and the Lord filled their afflictedminds with such comforts as every
one cannot understand, and in the end brought them to their desired
haven ... (13)
The familiar elements of providentialism are here: the reflection on the

mystery of grace, the elevation of faith above works, the celebration of the
a a scrip
efficacy of prayer, and the suggestion of typological linkwith
tural event, in this case Christ's calming thewind and water while crossing
the Sea of Galilee with the apostles, as recounted in all three of the synop
tic Gospels.8 But this is all in the context of a radical containment which
is also?paradoxically, given the circumstances?a form of stasis: the Pil
grim community functions here as a simple and cohesive body, open to the
ways of providence (or at least to those of providentialist interpretation),
because on a foreign vessel in the middle of a difficult passage it can be
very little else.
Similar moments occur in Bradford's account of the voyage to Cape
Cod in chapter 9. There is the cautionary tale of the "very profane" and
"haughty" sailor who paid dearly formocking his land-loving passengers
on the outward journey. "But it ... to smite this
pleased God young man
a a ... and it
with grievous disease, ofwhich he died in desperate manner
was an astonishment to all his fellows for
they noted it to be the just hand of
God upon him" (Morison 58).More significantly there is the description of
the arrival itself,where Bradford draws direct analogies to Paul's shipwreck
onMalta inActs 27 and Moses's vision of Canaan inDeuteronomy 3, and
goes so far as to substitute ocean-going "Englishmen" for Jacob's offspring
in his paraphrase of two verses from Deuteronomy 26 (61, 62, 63). This

entire passage has been treated as an early interpretation of theAmerican

an illustration of English
landscape and preconceptions about that land
scape as "wilderness" (see Laurence). What Iwant to stress here, however,
is that the typological density of the passage is closely aligned with the
a now no friends towelcome
complete absence of social milieu: "they had
them nor inns to entertain or refresh theirweatherbeaten bodies; no houses
or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succour.... which way soever
they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little
solace or content in respect of any outward objects" (61-62). The critical
on the "weatherbeaten face"
emphasis in this description has tended to fall
and "wild and savage hue" of the country (62), but the lack of satisfactory
"outward objects" is just as crucially the absence of friends, inns, houses,
towns?in other words, of the normal grounds for the transactions of daily
life as the Pilgrims had known it in England and Holland. The very last
words of the First Book point to the establishment of such grounds, "the
firsthouse for common use to receive them and their goods" (72).
These observations lead me to propose that the First Book can best be
treated as a case of "loose providentialism," as against a roughly contem
porary Puritan history like Edward Johnson's Wonder-Working Providence
of Sions Saviour inNew England (published 1653), where pr?videntialist
patterning is consistently, indeed monotonously, apparent (see Jameson).
Bradford's pr?videntialist rhetoric is suited to occasions, particularly to
originating events and periods of transition?to situations of genesis and
exodus, as itwere. As the Pilgrims settle into a way of life inwhat is now
often termed a "contact zone," a world more like that portrayed in the
book of Judges, these situations become fewer and fewer. Bradford ne
glects pr?videntialist historiography in the Second Book not because of
the perceived collapse of "the Pilgrim ideal" but because the generic ap
at hand is significantly
propriateness of providentialism to the material
diminished. This would imply as well that, early or late, Of Plymouth Plan
tation is not as tightlywedded to the forms of providential history as it is
often thought to be.
Then what kind of history is Bradford trying to write? The answer
is fairly simple, at least initially: Bradford wants to write the genealogi
cal history of a people from its first origins. Examples of such history,
often dynastic in content and patriotic in theme, are manifold in the late
medieval and early modern periods, drawing on both Greco-Roman and
Judaeo-Christian influences and ranging along various points between the
and the strictly secular. Bradford might have had at
strictly providential
least a passing acquaintance with the nationalistic chronicle histories of
Edward Hall, Raphael Holinshed, and John Stow, all of which fallmore
toward the secular end (see Levy 167-201). Such histories are structured by
births, deaths, and inheritances, but thematter within the frame is chiefly

are
occupied with the deeds of individuals, deeds which inseparable from
the identities of the persons who enact them and which are conceived as
having a moral centrality, suffusing the history with whatever values the
historian intends to promulgate. The very ancient notion of history as a
narrative of particular deeds?generally res gestae, the deeds of monarchs,
generals, or other types of "great men" (see Ferguson 3-27)?lends itself
well to histories constructed upon simple, linearmovement in a clearly de
fined direction: to accounts of long journeys to specific places of refuge
or settlement, of the rise or decline of noble houses, of missions of con
version, of single-minded military campaigns such as the Crusades.9 This
kind of movement appears to be characteristic of both universal history
and chronicle, the two medieval models for historiography that Emory
Elliott, in his survey of Puritan writing inNew England in the first vol
ume of the recent Cambridge History ofAmerican Literature, identifies as
on Bradford's
primary influences practice. Universal history, following Au
gustine's De Civitate Dei, may reveal a "larger pattern of God's plan in
the recorded events," and chronicle may be "a straightforward account of
narrative details" (215), but neither requires complicated narrative strate
gies. In Elliott's view the Second Book tells a familiar Old Testament story
about "the deaths of the first-generation patriarchs, the spread of sin, and
theweakening of the church" (216) while still functioning inmore mun
dane terms as "a practical man's sober accounting of the trials, pressures,
and even fractures the colony had experienced" (216-17).
As far as Bradford's "intendment" goes, Of Plymouth Plantation is not
especially distinctive and could sit easily with Elliott's description of its
debts to both universal and chronicle history.What renders the book un
usual is that, forced by the sheer pressure of the "matter" with which Brad
ford has towork, itmoves rather rapidly outside of these traditional sorts of
historiography. Bradford's history is distinguished from itsputative models
by its awareness of?and itswillingness to consider, if sometimes quite re
luctantly?the possibility that events are not unilaterally determined but
have multiple causes, causes which cannot be accounted for satisfactorily
a recording of res gestae under either divine or
by temporal authority. In
other words, Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation is effectivelymoving be
an understanding of as a record of mere deeds (whether or
yond history
not he considers those deeds to involve God's will and itsmanifestations)
toward an understanding of history as an examination of a set of relations,
many of which do not register in genealogical terms?or, for that mat
ter, in the terms of "a straightforward account of narrative details." The
project of the Pilgrims, while it could be categorized after a fashion as a
a a campaign, or even as the emergence (or
journey, mission, decay) of a
resists being simplified into any one of these things alone, and
"family,"
one of themost salient that of the business venture, rarely finds
categories,

a era. Bradford is caught between the

place in the histories of Bradford's
divergent requirements forwriting genealogical history and what is now
termed economic history, at a timewhen the requirements for the latter
are Working from a fairly re
largely invisible compared to the former.10
stricted palette of scriptural, classical, and ecclesiastical models for the
task he has set himself, he wants towrite a history of a community of like
minded believers which is at the same time, and just as significantly, the
a on a colonial business venture.
history of joint-stock company embarked
Yet Bradford's conception of the colonial polity?where the emphasis is
on self-containment and the significant actions of the
body's members?is
at historiographical cross purposes with his incipient understanding of the
colonial business venture, where individuals' actions lose theirparticularity
as are fanned out onto the intricateweb of commerce, and where the
they
Pilgrims come into ambiguous contact with the other sorts of communities
that fallwithin this same web. The microcosm of Plymouth Plantation can
not be stretched to fit smoothly over themacrocosm of theNew England
colonial economy. The hesitations, inconsistencies, and longueurs of the
Second Book suggest Bradford's difficulty in superimposing one over the
other. As a way of approaching this difficulty, Iwould like to offer "macro
cosmic" readings ofmaterial from the Second Book concerning what I take
to be two of its representative figures,Thomas Morton and Isaac Allerton.
OUTSIDERS: THOMAS MORTON, THE DUTCH,

AND FRONTIER TRADE
The famous account ofMorton's escapades in the annals for 1628 is gener
ally read in terms of its contrasts with Morton's competing account of the
same set of events inNew English Canaan.11 But theMorton
episode ap
pears as part of a larger narrative inwhich Bradford seeks to explain a sig
nificant shift in the social and economic relations?particularly in the trade
relations?prevailing in New England in the 1630s and 1640s. The crisis
that requires an explanation involves, very literally, the empowerment of
the natives ofMassachusetts commerce with the colonists?an
by way of
economic and, more troublesome still, a technological empowerment:
Hitherto the Indians of these parts had no pieces nor other arms but
their bows and arrows, nor ofmany years after; neither durst they
scarce handle a gun, so much were they afraid of them. And the very
sight of one (though out of kilter) was a terror unto them. But those
Indians to the east parts, which had commerce with the French, got
a common trade of it. (204)
pieces of them, and they in the end made
The rhetorical progression of the gun from a frightening symbol?a totem,
as itwere?representing the colonists' territorial power to a functional

tool among the natives appears here to originate in "commerce with the
French" and "common trade." But "common trade," as Bradford iswell
aware, isnot a closed system.The trade infirearms has other,more abstract
causes, causes which, in the broad outlines of Bradford's account, impli
cate theDutch from the south as well as the French from the "east." For in
1627 theDutch introduced themanufacture and trade of wampum to the
English and thence to the tribes ofMassachusetts and northern New En
gland, "and strange
was
it to see the great alteration itmade in a few years
among the Indians."12 Shell money, which had once had only limited use
among theNarragansetts and Pequots, "grew thus to be a commodity in
now ... 20 ...
these parts" and "hath continued about this years, and may
prove a drug in time" (203). Bradford falls readily here into the language
of trade, employing a colloquial expression for slow-moving merchandise
which remains a part of themerchant's lexicon to this day.
Among the stock theDutch traded in 1627 to interested parties inNew
an education in itsuses: "Neither
England was not only wampum itselfbut
did the English of this Plantation or any other in the land, till now that
so much as know what itwas,
they had knowledge of it from the Dutch,
much less that it was a commodity of thatworth and value" (203). There
an a
is implicit distinction in the passage between the utility of particular
a treats as more or less a
commodity, utility which Bradford priori, and
the knowledge which actually allows individuals and groups to make use
of that commodity within the sphere of trade. Knowledge, in other words,
becomes one valuable commodity among others. And in this passage Brad
ford introduces another party to the commerce inwampum: the English,
who become the beneficiaries of Dutch expertise in thismarket, enabling
them to enter themarket themselves.
Here I need to digress for an interval to address Pilgrim attitudes toward
the Dutch, since these attitudes figure significantly in Bradford's under
standing of theMorton episode and help to determine the symbolic func
tion of that episode within Bradford's history.While French traders from
Canada could easily enough be categorized as direct political, economic,
and even theological competitors with the English, the Dutch occupied a
much more ambiguous position at the boundaries of the Pilgrims' commu
nity life,having traded many things (knowledge included) with Bradford's
over a long
compatriots period. Amsterdam and Leyden had provided the
earliest havens for the Scrooby expatriates, who came over to theNether
lands on the prospect, as Bradford says, of "freedom of religion for all
men" (10). This freedom nonetheless had its threatening aspects. The un
at least to its counter
usually open character of theDutch market (relative
a
parts elsewhere in Europe) made for distinctly polyglot environment in
the Low Countries. Amsterdam housed an assortment of political, reli
a
gious, and economic immigrants frommany different places, including

significant number of Jews. Leyden, as home to one of the most presti

gious?and liberal?universities in Europe, had a diverse population, with
students coming from as far away as Russia (Dexter 413-14, 497). An
anonymous English satirist of the 1660s linked Dutch prosperity to this
peculiar diversity: "They countenance only Calvinism, but forTrades sake
all reason
they Tolerate others, except the Papists; which is the why the
treasure and stock of most Nations is transported thither,where there is
full Liberty of Conscience: you may be what the Devil you will there, so
you be but peaceable" (qtd. in Dexter 419).13 Bradford vividly describes
the disorienting effect of Dutch cultural life on the Pilgrim settlers: "they
heard a strange and uncouth language, and beheld the differentmanners
and customs of the people, with their strange fashions and attires; all so far
differing from that of their plain country villages (wherein theywere bred
and had so long lived) as it seemed theywere come into a new world" (16).
The explicit contrast here is between the exotic pluralism of theNether
lands and the communal stability of "plain country villages," villages which
Bradford renders as both centers of origin and emblems of continuity for
the Pilgrims, "wherein theywere bred and had so long lived."
One of the subtle historical ironies of the Pilgrims' arrival in the other
"new world" across the Atlantic is that themilieu which prompted their
soon a
departure from Europe reappeared in recognizably similar form
inNorth America. New Netherland was an unsuccessful and relatively
short-lived colonial experiment,14 yet its influence reached northward and
an
certainly touched the Plymouth settlers, for from early point New
Netherland displayed a diversity not unlike what the Pilgrims would have
remembered inAmsterdam and Leyden. Twenty years after the colony was
first settled, the Jesuit Isaac Jogues (perhaps exaggerating) noted that eigh
teen languages were spoken there (K?mmen 37).15 The linguistic m?lange
had its religious counterpart. In 1655 the conservative Dutch Reformed
minister Johannes Megapolensis complained that "we have here Papists,
Mennonites and Lutherans among the Dutch; also many Puritans or Inde
servants of Baal among the
pendents, and many Atheists and various other
English under this Government, who conceal themselves under the name
of Christians." He went on to inveigh against Jews, some of whom had
already settled inNew Netherland (byway of Brazil!) the previous year
on The more than
(K?mmen 61-62; quotation 61). colony also contained
a few freed slaves, thanks to the absence there of
racially discriminatory
laws, as well as theWest India Company's unusually lax regulation of the
slave trade (K?mmen 58-60).
Given their tolerance for the plural and the polyglot in their social af
fairs, the Dutch in their renewed proximity presented the Pilgrims with
re
complexities which may have been familiar from past experience but
mained difficult to untangle.16 From Bradford's point of view therewere

excellent reasons for keeping theDutch at arm's length, in spite of any felt
obligations to the Pilgrims' former "hosts." New Netherland might offer
to the Pilgrims (just as the "old" Netherlands had) the potential, at least,
for participation in a productive mercantile network; at the same time it
offered near at hand an antithetical, if in some ways tantalizing, model of
what a colonial community could be: an economic body, paradoxically dis
embodied, active but nebulous and contradictory, full of life but always
verging on chaos?"a Babel of Confusion," as Johannes Megalopolensis
believed itwas becoming (qtd. in K?mmen 37).17 Such a body was per
ceived, at least, to have a dangerous talent for assimilating and dissolving
within itself the identityof other bodies, including the identityof the plain
country village of like-minded believers which Bradford at one level imag
ined Plymouth Colony to be.18
The Tower of Babel is the last monument that Bradford would want
erected in the environs ofMassachusetts Bay, yet the Second Book often
suggests that such a tower is already built up to a point that invites divine
intervention?that New England is on the verge of a violent cosmopolitan
ism based on trade, inwhich various "speakers" struggle (and usually fail)
to rise above the hubbub in order to establish a lingua franca (or a common
a
currency) for the entire region. The wampum trade itselfoffers compact
illustration of the emerging state of affairs: the primary consequence of
the development of thismarket is that, Bradford says, "it makes the Indi
ans of these parts rich and
powerful and also proud thereby, and fills them
with pieces, powder and shot,which no laws can restrain" (204). The sen
tence is built upon a nice
parallelism between "rich"/"powerful"/"proud"
and "pieces"/"powder"/"shot" (with the parallelism reinforced by a par
tial rhyme in themiddle terms),which allows Bradford to suggest a close
relationship between the trade inwampum and the trade in guns. Brad
ford also implies here theworking-out of a clear causal sequence, but one
which moves in an interesting direction: wampum makes one wealthy,
wealth makes one powerful, power makes one proud, and pride makes
one enter into further commerce. The lack of "restraint" here relates not
to the Indians but to the "pieces, powder, and shot," and by extension to
the trade in those goods, a trade enabled by "the baseness of sundry un
cause is also
worthy persons, both English, Dutch and French" (204). This
a consequence: trade, whether inwampum or guns, dissolves the distinc
tions between these national groups into a general category of "baseness,"
a category which seems to involve class as much as itdoes moral standards.
The vanguard of baseness as far as the English are concerned is represented
for Bradford by the ever-suspect fishermen, participants in a commercial
enterprise inwhich themarkers of class and national origin had not been
observed with much rigor formany years.
The discussion then turns toMorton, and the reader's initial impression

may be that Bradford, having addressed the emergence of the Dutch as

trading partners inNew England, has now moved on to other matters of
concern in the year 1628. But there isno actual break in the historical narra
tive; Bradford continues to trace the issue of the native trade in guns back to
what he views as its source. The section on Morton begins retrospectively:
"About some three or four years before this time ..." (204). There is noth
ing very portentous about Morton's arrival in the country in the company
of one Captain Wollaston (whom Bradford describes rather cryptically as
"a man of pretty parts"). Other than having pretensions to being a colonial
own right,with "some small adventure of his own or other
projector in his
men's amongst them,"Morton's main distinction is his character as an un
touchable, so to speak, unable tomaintain the perquisites of class: he "had
little respect among them [i.e., his fellow planters], and was slighted by
themeanest servants" (204). What enables Morton to begin to cut a figure
inNew England is a decision based, again, on commercial interests;Wol
laston and company, "not finding things to answer their expectations nor
as
profit to arise they looked for" (204-05) decamp forVirginia, where
Wollaston finds a better trade?this time in human labor. He markets his
servants "at good rates, selling their time to other men" (205). Morton
gains his opportunity among those ofWollaston's group who remain be
hind, under the apparently ineffectual stewardship of Lieutenant Fitcher.
The critical emphasis at this point tends to fall on Morton, the "Lord
ofMisrule" with his "School of Atheism" (205), as either a carnivalesque
or a demonic figure, on one's
point of view. All the drinking,
depending
dancing, and frisking that goes on atMount Dagon, however, should not
obscure the fact that Bradford presents Morton as a businessman, whose
first saleable commodity, other than "strong drink and other junkets,"
can
happens to be the "good counsel" he says he provide toWollaston's
men (205). The counsel, as Bradford imagines Morton offering it, is in
"
effect a proposal to form a corporation: 'I, having a part in the Planta
tion, will receive you as my partners and consociates; so you may be free
from service, and we will converse, plant, trade, and live together as equals
and support and protect one another" (205). This is less the prospect of
a joint-stock company which does not limit its
Utopia than of subscrip
tion to the upper classes. The democratic thrust of the agreement, a kind
of parody of theMayflower Compact,19 is particularly vexing to Bradford,
who remarks later that settlers in the vicinity "saw that they should keep
no servants, forMorton would entertain any, how vile soever, and all the
scum of the country or any discontents would flock to him from all places,
if this nest were not broken" (208). Mount Wollaston becomes Merry
mount, with all its attendant amusements, only afterMorton and his new
"had got some into their hands, and got much
partners goods by trading
with the Indians" (205). One of Bradford's chief complaints against Mor

ton is that this trade leads to scandalously lavish expenditure on thewrong

sort of commodities: "both wine and strong waters in great excess (and,
as some a
reported) ?10 worth in morning" (205). To avoid running his
into the red,Morton makes a momentous?in Bradford's view,
operation
a decision: "Now to maintain this riotous prodi
catastrophic?business
gality and profuse excess, Morton, thinking himself lawless, and hearing
what gain the French and fishermenmade by trading of pieces, powder and
shot to the Indians, he as the head of this consortship began the practice of
the same in these parts" (206).
Bradford is careful to state thatMorton's decision, made in his role "as
the head of this consortship," represents, so to speak, a corporate goal. Yet
Morton contributes a very individual sort of initiative to the new trade:
once again knowledge surfaces as among themost valuable of commodi
ties. "And first he taught. . . [the Indians] how to use . . . [the guns], to
charge and discharge, and what proportion of powder to give the piece,
according to the size or bigness of the same; and what shot to use for
fowl and what for deer" (206). The natives subsequently become part of
Morton's corporation as well: "having thus instructed them, he employed
some of them to hunt and fowl for him, so as they became farmore active
in that employment than any of the English" (207). As in the case of
those other formerly innocent knowers, Adam and Eve, the natives' eyes
are saw the execution that a
opened: "when they piece would do, and the
benefit thatmight come by the same, they became mad (as itwere) after
them and would not stick to give any price they could attain for them; ac
counting their bows and arrows but baubles in comparison of them" (207).
Bradford's narrative proceeds by way of reversals: as the once nondescript
Morton becomes a figure to be reckoned with, so the natives come to
view their once formidable weapons as "baubles"?a word, interestingly
enough, used quite often by seventeenth-century colonists to describe the
kinds of items they liked to tradewith the Indians.
Now one might say that knowledge is the devil's stock in trade, and
Bradford goes some distance to portray Morton as the original sinner in
this particular ordeal: "here I may take occasion to bewail the mischief
that thiswicked man began in these parts, and which since, base covet
ousness men that should know better now
prevailing in [my emphasis], has
at length got the upper hand and made this thing common, notwithstand
ing any laws to the contrary" (207). There is a conspicuous efforthere to
attribute the responsibility for a large-scale crisis to one individual, and
the reader is aware that the narrative possesses a certain allegorical force
here. Yet there are aspects of the Bradford's account that forestall its inter
a
pretation as New England version of the third chapter of Genesis with
Morton figuring as the serpent in a New World Eden, and these relate to
the commercial character ofMorton's .
activity. Here itmay be necessary

to distinguish in a rough-and-ready way between Bradford as a storyteller

and Bradford as an explicator.20 Both roles are proper to his activity as a
historian, indeed they overlap, but they also reflect rather different generic
a a
requirements. As storyteller Bradford aims for simplicity of effect and
limited means to achieve that effect: a small cast of characters, a
employs
linear plot, an obvious goal to be reached. The "story" of Thomas Morton
is one of a wicked man, a tempter,who disrupts the prevailing order of the
community and is suitably punished by the forces of good, represented by
turn embedded in an explication of a
Captain Standish. But this story is in
complex phenomenon which resists being broken down and reassembled
with the familiar tools of the storyteller. Bradford's account of the arming
of the natives moves on multiple planes, and the relations between those
are not
planes always clear. A consequence of this is that the account takes
on the on Shake
quality that A. P. Rossiter, in several of his great lectures
called see also 51, 292). The reader
speare, "two-eyedness" (62; perceives
an oscillation between the is un
perspective of the story,where Morton
questionably the primary source of the problem, and the perspective of the
explication, where Morton ismerely an agent in a lengthy causal chain
that neither begins nor ends with him. Rather than attempt further,byway
of explanation, to sort out Morton's actual responsibility for a disturbing
state of affairs, Bradford concludes the account by reverting to storytelling,
with the comical episode of the siege ofMerrymount and Morton's blus
tering defense and (nearly) bloodless defeat. Bradford then bids farewell to
the entirematter: "I have been too long about so unworthy a person, and
bad a cause" (210).
Yet the shadow of this "bad cause" extends beyond the shadow cast
by the "unworthy person" and involves actors who do not fit readily into
the story, about whom Bradford speaks with difficulty.These actors are
on the current state of
shadowy presences in the Bradford's commentary
the arms trade inNew England:
in a time ofwar or danger, as experience hath manifested,... when

lead hath been scarce and men for their own defense would gladly have
...
given a groat a pound yet hath itbeen bought up and sent to other
and sold to such as trade itwith the Indians at izd^?ie
places pound.
And it is like they give 3s or 4s the pound, for theywill lwe it at any
rate. And these things have been done in the same timeswhen some
of their neighbours and friends are daily killed by the Indians, or are
in danger thereof and live but at the Indians' mercy. Yea some, as they
have acquainted themwith all other things, have told them how gun
are to be had in
powder ismade, and all thematerials in it, and they
their own land; and I am confident, could they attain tomake saltpeter,
theywould teach them tomake powder. (207)

The passage presents the reader with a thicket of passive constructions

and ungrounded pronouns. The lead for shot "hath . . . been bought up
and sent . . . and sold"; "these things have been done." The culprits are
"such" and "some." Neither senders, sellers, nor traders assume a
buyers,
specific identity, though Bradford implies that the activity is seriatim and
involves more than a few hands. The use of "they" and "their" is am
seems to
biguous throughout; in the last sentence it apply alternately to
"some," tomaterials for gunpowder, and to the Indians (or possibly back
to "some" again). The meaning of "them," however, is straightforward; it
ones at the receiving
always refers to the Indians, who are, after all, the
end. This referential trauma in Bradford's prose occurs because commerce,
and the participation in commerce, has collapsed the boundary between
the Pilgrim community at Plymouth and "such as trade . . .with the Indi
ans." The passage erases distinctions between one community and another,
suggesting the inescapably porous character of trading relations inNew
as elsewhere, knowledge is a significant
England. Here commodity: before
the natives can produce gunpowder of their own, "some" must "teach"
them. A difficult question bubbles to the surface of this strangely anony
mous melting pot: who knows? Bradford evokes a cloud of witnesses but
is not prepared to single out any one of them.While Morton may be pre
sented as a literal scapegoat, one whose expulsion has a corrective or ca
thartic effect on the community at large, the account raises the prospect of
agents other thanMorton moving about on the periphery ofMerrymount,
even in the heart of
perhaps Plymouth itself.
INSIDERS: ISAAC ALLERTON AND PLYMOUTH'S DEBTS
As a piece of historical reconstruction, theMorton episode reveals a con

ceptual discomfort that appears inmany other places in the Second Book,
most noticeably in Bradford's lengthy efforts tomake sense of Isaac Aller
ton's behavior as agent for the colony in England. It should be said that
Bradford is under no illusions about Allerton, making him the butt ofmuch
proverbial and scriptural wisdom about the dangers of seeking after riches
at the hazard of one's soul (see, for instance, 239). Inmany ways Allerton,
even more thanMorton, emerges as the archvillain of the
history, disas
trously compromising the colony's finances while stubbornly pursuing "his
own and "private benefit" (211). Bradford recalls that itwas
particular"
in fact Allerton who "for base gain" brought Morton back to the colony
fromEngland after the first expulsion, using him "as a scribe" until he was
forced "to pack him away," largely due toMorton's propensity for trading
guns with the natives (216).21 This is only one of many sorts of malfea
sance on Allerton's part which preoccupy Bradford throughout the annals
from 1628 to 1633. Yet Bradford also shows a deep and initially puzzling

3o6 Early American Literature, Volume 33,1998
reluctance to condemn Allerton absolutely, despite the extensive (and ex

to the
tensively recorded) damage he does plantation's interests: "though
I do was some cause to leadMr. Allerton aside
private gain persuade myself
in these beginnings; yet I think or at least charity carries me to hope, that he
intended to deal faithfullywith them [i.e., the Pilgrims] in themain" (218).
This is a severely qualified form of excuse, but it does suggest the nature
of the problem: while Morton can be readily demonized, Allerton cannot.
As the commentators to theMassachusetts Historical Society edition tact
on thewhole dealt one who seems to
fully note, "Bradford has kindly with
have been unsuccessful in all his ventures" (Bradford,History 1: 45m.).
Some of the reasons for this forebearance require no great detective
work. For instance, Bradford had close personal and administrative con
nections with Allerton that rarely emerge in the text.22Allerton had also
become the son-in-law ofWilliam Brewster, one of the most respected
members of the colony (218). Both of these facts point towhat probably
man: Allerton, passenger
weighs most heavily on Bradford's account of the
on the a
Mayflower and signer of the Compact (see 441), is member of the
Pilgrim community in a way thatMorton never could be. It is possible to
see Bradford's ambivalence about Allerton resulting from conflict of inter
est, from the common tendency to "forgive one's own," or even from an
attempt to maintain a Christ-like tolerance of the individual sinner. But
in terms of Bradford's effort towrite history, the ambivalence appears to
spring from his difficulty in placing Allerton appropriately in the narrative
of Plymouth's fortunes. Allerton's situation in this regard is close to the
reverse ofMorton's. Where Morton becomes a personification of the dan
outer world,
gerously porous boundary between the community and the
Allerton is verymuch inmedias res.23The majority of his transactions are
not with Dutch, French, or native outsiders but with the colonists and their
backers in England. He is, in other words, a significant representative of
the Pilgrim community as a community. At the same time he is a source of
confusion not only to Plymouth but to Bradford in his chosen role as his
torian of the colony. Noting Allerton's ultimate discharge as Plymouth's
agent in the annal for 1630, Bradford continues, "But these businesses were
not ended tillmany years after, nor well understood of a long time, but
folded up in obscurity and kept in the clouds, to the great loss and vexa
tion of the Plantation, who in the end were (forpeace sake) forced to bear
the unjust burden of them, to their almost undoing. As will appear ifGod
give life to finish this history" (233-34).
This last sentence finds Bradford mindful of a story to be told, indeed
to be completed. But what kind of story? Often the "accounting" in the
annals concerning Allerton is less of res gestae than ofmonies disbursed, re
ceived, loaned, repaid, lost. The climax of this narrative, as itwere, occurs

in the annal for 1631 when Bradford turns to Allerton's actual accounts:
as
"They were so large and intricate they [the Plymouth examiners] could
not well understand them,much less examine and correct them without a
great deal of time and help and his own presence, which was now hard to
get amongst them. And itwas two or three years before they could bring
them to any good pass, but never make them perfect" (241-42). This serves
as a pr?cis of the nar
historiographical problem thatAllerton presents: his
rative, like his accounts, can never be made can never be
"perfect," fully
sorted out. Bradford does make gestures at bringing Allerton's history to
closure along providential lines, showing how "God crossed him mightily"
in his later ventures and how he was "called to account for these and other
his gross miscarriages" by the Plymouth church: "He confessed his fault
and promised better walking, and that he would wind himself out of these
courses so soon as he could, etc" (244, 245). But Allerton?as Bradford's
wry "etc." surfacing as a nuisance and distraction for sev
implies?keeps
eral more pages, until he abruptly fades away as an active participant in the
near the
history of Plymouth when Bradford says, beginning of the annal
for 1633, "I leave these matters and come to other things" (256).
The Allerton material is likely to be vexing for the present-day reader,
not only because Allerton himself is portrayed so colorlessly?Bradford
manages tomake Morton more vivid in a few pages than he does Allerton
over the course of several annals?but because of the general abstractness
of this part of the narrative, inwhich the two trading-cum-fishing ships
that become the vehicles formany of Allerton's financial machinations, the
as
inauspiciously named Friendship and White Angel, figure almost promi
nently as "characters" as do regularly mentioned individuals like Aller
ton,Winslow, James Sherley, or Timothy Hatherley. This abstract quality
makes better sense, however, if it is understood as reflecting Bradford's
uncertainty about attributing responsibility for the extraordinarily messy
crisis of indebtedness among the Pilgrims during the early 1630s. Allerton
is, after all, mainly a functionary of the colony, following (albeit often in
a very distorted form) the instructions of his colleagues at
Plymouth and
inLondon. In a telling passage from the annal for 1629, Bradford recounts
Allerton's purchase on the colony's account of a large quantity of salt from
a fishing station at a good price: "And shortly after he might have had
?30 clear profit for it,without any more trouble about it." But a group led
none other than Allerton's father-in-law Edward Winslow
by "stayed him
from selling the salt" with the idea, apparently improvised on the spot,
that they could contract at Bristol or elsewhere for a fishing ship that could
also be laded with merchandise instead of the salt that they already had
in hand. "And so theymight have a full supply of goods without paying
freight, and in due season, which might turn greatly to their advantage."

3o8 Early American Literature, Volume 33,1998
The only objection to this scheme came from Bradford himself, "who had
no mind to it, seeing even he, "seeing
they had always lost by fishing"; but
their earnestness,... gave (221).
way"
The responsibility forwhat Bradford obviously views as a harebrained
scheme is fairlywell-distributed here, even though Allerton, by buying the
salt in the firstplace, is in some fashion the "cause."24 Allerton's deeds
a
provide Bradford with way of outlining dimensions of collective activity
at Plymouth forwhich Bradford's historiographical vocabulary lends him
no very
precise descriptive terms and which cannot be subsumed under the
as a
metaphor of the community simple, self-contained body going about
its individual "business." It is not that Bradford elides the personal contri
bution of Allerton, or anyone else, to Plymouth's financial quandary. But
what concerns him most, and what he struggles to illuminate, is the dy
namic and overdetermined economic lifeof the colony, dense with multiple
and competing interests as well as uncontrollable elements (weather, costs
of shipping, seasonal variations in price, supply and demand, and so on)
which Bradford generally neglects to assign to theworkings of Providence.
He can afford to be relatively light-handed in his treatment of Allerton be
cause it is not theman himself but his accounts thatmatter in the
history of
Plymouth. His significance lies, for instance, in the ?113 expended on the
salt and the loss of ?30 of easy profit, since the expense and profit belong
to the community and to form an index of its successes and failures.
help
Like Morton, Allerton is a character who invites across
"two-eyedness"
the divide between storytelling and explication, though the emphases fall
rather differently in theAllerton sequences than they do in theMorton epi
sode. Bradford seems aware throughout these sequences that explication
to
(analysis, that is, of the complex conditions that lead specific economic
consequences for the colony) is themost important historical task before
him, but up to a he continues to on the old familiar tools of
point rely
understood as stories about the deeds of to a
history prominent men?up
Bradford's reconstruction of events moves away from such
point. gradually
stories toward a stress on the data in the financial records of the colony,
data that proves to be more useful in dealing with the historical problems
raised by the Pilgrims' fiscal crisis in the early 1630s. At some level Brad
ford recognizes that the numbers tell the story.
A NEW HISTORY?
As I have suggested earlier in this essay, the experience of reading Of

Plymouth Plantation becomes less troublesome ifone thinks of Bradford as
moving not somuch away from one kind of history as toward another. The
movement is tentative because this other kind of history is still so ill-defined
in the seventeenth century, and is one that Bradford writes almost in spite

to transform Plymouth into a

of himself. The impulse is always present
closed community, a simulacrum of John Robinson's primal flock, whose
"outside relations" are mainly typological and turned toward the past. Yet
Bradford remains mindful at the same time of the fact that the colony is an
adventure, that its supporters in London are looking to the "books" with
other ideas inmind, that the Pilgrims have competitors (Dutch, French,
natives, Bay Colonists, fishermen), that the project is necessarily an open
ended one, faced toward a futurewhere the years succeed one another in
the normal way but never turn out to mean precisely the same thing. In
other words, Bradford confronts as both an obstacle and an obligation
what over the last three centuries has become a commonplace: the notion
that human events have an economic context.
Is Bradford one of the first economic historians? To answer this question
seem one considers how few histo
affirmativelymay unduly bold, until
ries of the period are actually likeBradford's. Perhaps the closest thematic
analogue is Richard Hakluyt the Younger's compendium The Principall
Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, first published
in 1589, greatly expanded in the second edition of 1598-1600, and con
tinued tomassive proportions in the seventeenth century by Samuel Pur
chas under the title Purchas his Pilgrimes. Richard Helgerson has argued
that the novelty of the Principall Navigations lies inHakluyt's treatment
of merchants as significant, even heroic, actors in English history and his
commerce at the center of English national life (Helgerson
placement of
163-91). Hakluyt's magnum opus is not, strictly speaking, a historical nar
rative; it is instead an anthology which contains narratives along with many
other kinds of documents. Itwould also be difficult to say with certainty
that Hakluyt's work influenced Bradford's project in any way. Even so,
there is a connection to be drawn between Hakluyt and Bradford, for both
the Principall Navigations and Of Plymouth Plantation form part of the de
scriptive literature of English colonial expansion at its beginnings. Itmay
be that, as Helgerson has claimed inHakluyt's case, the sheer necessity of
commercial activity to the process of colonization forces economic con
cerns into a
prominence in Bradford's narrative in way which might not
otherwise occur ifhe were simplywriting "domestic" history.
In any event, this sort of problem cannot be raised
satisfactorily ifBrad
ford's work is simply assigned to the circumscribed region of providential
ist history. I have tried to suggest at different points in this essay that Of
Plymouth Plantation's generic affiliations are fairlywide-ranging, and that
they lead in unusual directions. This is not to say that Bradford means to
be unusual. He seems to accept the role of a historian of economic con
texts only grudgingly, because he recognizes how damaging such history is
to his commemoration of the interior life of his community, and how dis
tant he is from the hermetic self-assurance of, say, the author of the Book

3io Early American Literature, Volume 33,1998
of Joshua or John Foxe in the Book ofMartyrs. The "incompleteness" of

the Second Book of Of Plymouth Plantation has less to do with Bradford's
final gesture of resignation over the failure of the Pilgrim dream thanwith
his recognition that the history he is attempting towrite has no real end
ing, because it is no longer the history of a body that either clearly lives or
a
clearly dies. The Second Book is testimony to the difficultyof serving two
masters?not only God and Mammon, but God and Clio.
NOTES
i. This memorable sentence also the point of for Sargent's

provides departure
essay (390).
2. Howard (237-42) offersa pungent historical summaryof the standard views
on Bradford;Wenska, within a broadly pr?videntialist reading filtered(dubiously)
throughEriksonian psychology,makes the very sensible point that the two parts
of the historywere written atwidely separated intervalsand thus reflectdifferent
levelsof Bradford's experiencewith the fortunesof the colony.
3. For a definitionof providential history I look no fartherthan theone provided
by Francis Bacon inbook 2 of The Advancement ofLearning (1605):
of Providence ... containeth that excellent which
History correspondence
is between God's revealedwill and his secretwill; which though itbe so
obscure as for the most it is not to the natural man; no, nor
part legible
many times to those thatbehold it from the tabernacle; yet at some times it
pleaseth God, forour better establishmentand the confutingof thosewhich
are as without God in the world, to write it in such text and letters
capital
that, as the prophet saith, 'he that runneth by may read it'... (Vickers 185)
4. Thanks to Peter Weed for this bon mot.

5. Jesper Rosenmeier notes as
part of his largely pr?videntialist interpretation of
Bradford that "The annals are filledwith extraordinary scenes from the historyof
salvation; but they do not stand as parts of a great and coherent whole,
Plymouth's
as actions in an evolving drama. The years are shining but isolated moments, beads
of revelation that remain unstrung" (98).
6. "The Historical Text as Artifact" (White 81-100) offers a com
Literary nicely
on this topic.
pressed presentation ofWhite's ideas
7. The concluding verse of Judges is as follows: "In those days therewas no king
in Israel; everyman did thatwhich was right inhis own eyes" (Judges21:25, KJV).
I am grateful toHaskell Hinnant and an anonymous reader for remindingme of
what I ought to have noticed in the firstplace.
8. Matt. 8:23-27; Mark 4:35-41; Luke 8:22-25.
9. These are, not surprisingly,also the central topoi of epic poetry.On the links
between the epic genre and colonial see Quint.
activity,
10. For example, Bacon in book 2 of The Advancement ofLearning divides his
tory into four categories, "Natural, Civil, Ecclesiastical, and Literary" (Vickers
175).There isno obvious place in this scheme forhistorical accounts of commercial
create a
activity. Bacon under natural history called
does "History of
subcategory
Nature Wrought or Mechanical" which would include agriculture and manual arts
as two of its subjects (Vickers 177), but he seems to have inmind nothingmore ab

stract than a history of material technologies. The other possible niche for matters
of business would be in one of the minor partitions under civil history, "Journals,"
which consider "accidents of a meaner nature" (Vickers 183). That the historical
dimension of commerce failed to impress itselfon one of the greatest analytical
minds of the era should help to indicate the extent of the problem faced by Brad
ford inwriting Of PlymouthPlantation.
n. See, most recently, Cartelli.
12. Cronon uses this from Bradford to illustrate the point that "wam
quotation
pum was part of the reorganization of Indian economic and political life in the
wake of the epidemics: competition for itsacquisition established new leaders,pro
moted dependence on European traders, and helped shiftthe tributeobligations
which had previously existed among Indian villages" (97).
13.The original source for the quotation isThe Dutch Drawn to theLife (Lon
don, 1664) 48.1 havemodernized the spelling in a single instance.
14. The colony lasted for fortyyears, fromthe arrival of thefirstcivilians in1624
until itwas ceded to theDuke ofYork in1664, andwas underpopulated and under
capitalized duringmost of thatperiod, largelydue to the parsimony of theDutch
West India Company.
15.This proliferationof languageswas the result of theWest India Company's
strategyof recruitingcolonists fromother parts of Europe, sinceDutch citizens,
enjoying considerable prosperity at home, were reluctant to immigrate toNew
Netherland. See K?mmen 36-38.
16. The nature of the dynamic between the Pilgrims and theDutch colonists
is quietly suggested by an exchange of formal correspondence from 1627 which
Bradford includes in his narrative.The first letter is addressed to Bradford from
Isaack de Rasieres, secretaryto theCouncil ofNew Netherland. De Rasieres, citing
common interests "our common enemy the asks for an op
(namely Spaniards")
portunity to tradewith Plymouth: "if it so fall out that any good that come to our
from our native to you, we shall take ourselves
hands country may be serviceable
bound to and accommodate therewith, either for beaver or any other
help you
wares or merchandise that you should be pleased to deal for." If the Pilgrims do
not wish to will be willing to sell "beaver or otter or such like
buy, perhaps they
commodities as may be useful to us" (Bradford 378, 379). In his replyBradford
cites the alliance of theEnglish and Dutch against Spain as "sufficientto unite us
together in love and good neighbourhood in all our dealings," and expresses grati
tude for "the good and courteous we have found in your
entreaty country, having
lived theremany yearswith freedom and good content." Bradford claims thatDe
Rasieres's offer "is to us very and we doubt not but in short time we
acceptable,
have commerce and trade He then goes on, however, to
may profitable together."
demur firmly,ifpolitely: "But for this yearwe are fully supplied with all neces
saries, both forclothing and other things.But hereafter it is likewe shall deal with
you ifyour rates be reasonable" (380). The notion of "good neighbourhood" here
seems to involve maintaining a distance from one's
respectful neighbors.
17. New as
Netherland, many historians have noted, displays interesting paral
lelswith theVirginia colony during its firstfiftyyears.The Pilgrims' relationswith
the Virginians were marked a similar sort of ambivalence. See, for instance,
by
Bradford's account of the strandedVirginia-bound travelerMr. Fells (Bradford
191-92). Concerns about theVirginia enterprise (mostof themprobably justified)
surfaceearlyon in thePilgrims' transactions; seeRobert Cushman's letterof 8May
1619 (Bradford355-57).

i8. The of dissolution, in the familiar terms of a

danger portrayed "generation
in Bradford's account of "the Reasons and Causes of...
gap," figures prominently
[thePilgrims']Removal" toNew England:
But that which was more lamentable ... was that many of their children ...
were drawn evil and dangerous courses, getting the reins
away by examples
off theirnecks and departing fromtheirparents. Some became soldiers,
others took upon them far voyages some worse courses
by sea, and others
tending to dissoluteness and thedanger of theirsouls, to thegreat griefof
their parents and dishonour of God. So that saw their posterity would
they
be indanger to degenerate and be corrupted. (Morison 25)
Here "dissoluteness" and communal dissolution are conflated;
personal readily
Bradford locates the cause of thisparticular problem both in the generalwayward
ness of youth and in the economic pressures of thePilgrims'Dutch environment?
pressureswhich forced thenewestmembers of thebody outward to fend forthem
selves.
19. "[We]... and in the presence of God and one of another,
solemnly mutually
Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic, forour better
ordering and preservation and furtheranceof the ends aforesaid" (Bradford76).
Even so the foundersof this new body politic acknowledge themselves as "loyal
subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James" (Bradford75). The representa
tivesof Plymouth later threatenMorton with a "penalty" thatwill be "more than
he could be could bear?His Majesty's displeasure" (Bradford209).
20. With the very sense of someone who
specific unfolds things, and, second
or them?one who teases out the strands to render some
arily, develops expands
thingupon a larger field. See the definition for "explicate" in theOED. Another
appropriate notion herewould bewhat the late William Walsh called "colligation."
Walsh applied this term,borrowed from the nineteenth-centuryCambridge phi
William Whewell, to a common mode of historical
losopher explanation:
when asked to a event... [historians] will trac
explain particular begin by
ingconnections between thatevent and otherswith which it stands in inner
relationship_The underlyingassumption here is thatdifferenthistorical
events can be as to constitute a a
regarded going together single process,
whole ofwhich theyare all parts and inwhich theybelong together in a spe
way. And thefirstaim of thehistorian,when he is asked to
cially intimate
some event or other, is to see it as part of such a process, to locate it
explain
in itscontext bymentioning other eventswith which it isbound up. (24-25;
see also 59-63)
With itsemphasis on relationships and the analysis of relationships,colligation as

a "style" of historiography is thus not limitedby the conventions of linearnarra
tive; a "colligator" would not
necessarily
be a
storyteller,
at least not in any
simple
sense of a
telling story.
21. Allerton andMorton appear to be linked to one another inBradford's think
ing: the detailed examination ofAllerton's actions begins immediatelyafterBrad
fordcloses his discussion of the "battle" atMerrymount (210).
22. In theannal for1621, Bradford describes (in the thirdperson) his election as
governor: "and [Bradford]being not recovered of his illness, inwhich he had been
near the point of death, Isaac Allerton was chosen to be an assistant unto him who,
Which I here note
by renewed election everyyear, continued sundryyears together.
once forall" (86). In factBradford never again referstoAllerton as his assistant.

He implieshere thathad he not been so illhewould never have needed an assistant

at all; itwas othermembers of the communitywho kept electingAllerton to the
position.
R. G. Usher in his article on Allerton in theDictionary ofAmerican Biography
calls him "third in importanceduring the first ten years at Plymouth" and notes
thathewas the only officerof the colony other than Bradford from 1621 to 1624.
After his disgrace at Plymouth he eventually settled inNew Haven, where he built
up a trade on "his own particular" with New Netherland, Virginia, and English
interests in the Caribbean.
23. The idea ofAllerton being "in themiddle" takes a sinisterturn inBradford's
description of the controversyoverwhether Plymouth should cooperate with the
London partners in supporting Edward Ashley's dubious fur-tradingventure at
Penobscot: "they [at Plymouth] considered that if they joined not in the business,
theyknewMr. Allerton would be with them [i.e., theLondon partners] in it,and
sowould swim as itwere between both to theprejudice of both, but of themselves
[atPlymouth] especially" (Bradford220).
24. Bradford continues the story in the annal for 1630: the ship in
question?ap
parently theFriendship?encountered bad weather and returnedto port, failing to
reachNew England thatyear (226-27).
WORKS CITED
Bradford,William. History ofPlymouth Plantation.Massachusetts Historical

2
Society edition. vols. Boston: Houghton, 1912.
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Of PlymouthPlantation 1620-1647 byWilliam Bradford Sometime
Governor Thereof.Notes and introduction by Samuel Eliot Morison. New
York: Knopf, 1952.
Cartelli, Thomas. "Transplanting Disorder: The Construction ofMisrule in
Morton's New English Canaan and Bradford's Of PlymouthPlantation."
English Literary Renaissance 27 (1997): 258-80.
Condon, Thomas J.New York Beginnings: The Commercial Origins ofNew
Netherland. New York: New York Univ. Press, 1968.
Cronon, William. Changes in theLand: Indians, Colonists and theEcology of
New England. New York: Hill andWang, 1983.
Daly, Robert. "William Bradford's Vision ofHistory." American Literature 44
(1973): 557-69
Dexter, Henry Martin, andMorton Dexter. The England andHolland of the
Pilgrims. 1906. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1978.
Elliott, Emory. "New England Puritan Literature." The Cambridge History of
American Literature. Vol. 1. Ed. Sacvan Bercovitch and Cyrus R. K. Patell.
Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994.171-306.
Ferguson, Arthur B. Clio Unbound: Perception of theSocial and Cultural Past
inRenaissance England. Duke Monographs inMedieval and Renaissance
Studies 2. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1979.
Franklin,Wayne. Discoverers, Explorers, Settlers: The Diligent Writers ofEarly
America. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979.
Griffith,John. Of PlymouthPlantation as aMercantile Epic." Arizona Quar
terly28 (1972): 231-42.

Helgerson, Richard. Forms ofNationhood: The Elizabethan Writing ofEngland.

Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992.
Hovey, Kenneth Alan. "The Theology ofHistory inOf Plymouth Plantation
and Its Predecessors." Early American Literature 10 (1975): 47-66.
Howard, Alan B. "Art and History inBradford's Of Plymouth Plantation."
William andMary Quarterly 3rd ser. 28 (1971): 237-66.
Jameson, J. Franklin, ed. Johnson'sWonder-Working Providence 1618-1651.
New York: Scribner, 1910.
K?mmen, Michael. Colonial New York: A History. New York: Scribner, 1975.
Laurence, David. "William Bradford's American Sublime." PMLA102
(1987): 55-65.
Levin, David. "William Bradford: The Value of Puritan Historiography."
Major Writers ofEarly American Literature. Ed. Everett Emerson. Madison,
Wise: Univ. ofWisconsin Press, 1972. n-31.
Levy, F. J.Tudor Historical Thought. SanMarino, Ca.: Huntington Library,

1967.
Quint, David. Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form fromVirgil to
Milton. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1993.
"
Rosenmeier, Jesper. 'Withmy owne eyes':William Bradford's Of Plymouth
Plantation." The American Puritan Imagination: Essays inRevaluation. Ed.
Sacvan Bercovitch. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1974. 77-106.
Rossiter, A. P. Angel withHorns and Other Shakespeare Lectures. Ed. Graham
Storey.New York: Theatre Arts, 1961.
Sargent,Mark L. "William Bradford's 'Dialogue' with History." New England
Quarterly 65 (1992): 389-421.
Usher, Roland Greene. "Allerton, Isaac." Dictionary ofAmerican Biography.
Ed. Allen Johnson,n vols. New York: Scribner's, 1964.
Vickers, Brian, ed. Francis Bacon. Oxford Authors. Oxford: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1996.
Walsh, W. H. Philosophy ofHistory: An Introduction.Revised ed. New York:
Torchbooks-Harper, 1967.
Wenska, Walter P. "Bradford's Two Histories: Pattern and Paradigm inOf
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White, Hayden. Tropics ofDiscourse: Essays inCultural Criticism. Baltimore:
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Silent Partners: Historical Representation in William Bradford's "Of Plymouth Plantation"

Author(s): David Read

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.116 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014 16:47:42 PM

William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation remains both one of

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.116 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014 16:47:42 PM

point of melancholy, of the incapacity of sinful humanity to fulfillGod's

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PROVIDENTIALISM AND HISTORICAL

The problem of describing Plymouth's corporate life appears not toweigh

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outcome. He alludes to his "intendment" (8) and to his (sometimes un

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The familiar elements of providentialism are here: the reflection on the

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entire passage has been treated as an early interpretation of theAmerican

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This content downloaded from 132.174.255.116 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014 16:47:42 PM

a era. Bradford is caught between the

OUTSIDERS: THOMAS MORTON, THE DUTCH,

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significant number of Jews. Leyden, as home to one of the most presti

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.116 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014 16:47:42 PM

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.116 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014 16:47:42 PM

may be that Bradford, having addressed the emergence of the Dutch as

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ton is that this trade leads to scandalously lavish expenditure on thewrong

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to distinguish in a rough-and-ready way between Bradford as a storyteller

in a time ofwar or danger, as experience hath manifested,... when

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The passage presents the reader with a thicket of passive constructions

INSIDERS: ISAAC ALLERTON AND PLYMOUTH'S DEBTS

As a piece of historical reconstruction, theMorton episode reveals a con

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reluctance to condemn Allerton absolutely, despite the extensive (and ex

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As I have suggested earlier in this essay, the experience of reading Of

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to transform Plymouth into a

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.116 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014 16:47:42 PM

of Joshua or John Foxe in the Book ofMartyrs. The "incompleteness" of

i. This memorable sentence also the point of for Sargent's

4. Thanks to Peter Weed for this bon mot.

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This content downloaded from 132.174.255.116 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014 16:47:42 PM

i8. The of dissolution, in the familiar terms of a

With itsemphasis on relationships and the analysis of relationships,colligation as

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.116 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014 16:47:42 PM

He implieshere thathad he not been so illhewould never have needed an assistant

Bradford,William. History ofPlymouth Plantation.Massachusetts Historical

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.116 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014 16:47:42 PM

Helgerson, Richard. Forms ofNationhood: The Elizabethan Writing ofEngland.

Levy, F. J.Tudor Historical Thought. SanMarino, Ca.: Huntington Library,

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.116 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014 16:47:42 PM

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