New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America
by Wendy Warren
Warren dismantles the comforting narrative of a "free" New England by showing how slavery and colonization shaped the region from the start. The book is grounded in meticulous archival work that reveals hidden labor systems and coerced lives. Warren shows how Indigenous dispossession and African enslavement were intertwined economic projects. Her prose is clear and restrained, allowing the documentary evidence to speak with devastating force. The book traces how slavery was normalized through law, commerce, and religion. It also exposes how historical memory has selectively edited these facts out. Warren's approach makes early America feel less exceptional and more recognizably imperial. The narrative emphasizes structural entanglement rather than isolated incidents. Readers come away with a sharper, less mythic sense of "origins." It's sobering history that changes the frame of American beginnings. Essential reading for understanding how slavery was national, not regional.
