Keeping Family in an Age of Long Distance Trade, Imperial Expansions, and Exile, 1550–1850 ed. by Heather Dalton (review)

The eleven essays in this volume consider the importance of family networks— specifically, how families maintained both their relationships and businesses—in a time of discovery and settlement, increasing international trade, and the construction of empires. Drawing on the methodological tools of both family historians and scholars of migration, and considering the implications of class, race, religion and gender, the authors provide insight to the ways in which families were foundational in the creation of our interconnected world. As editor Heather Dalton argues in the introduction, “families were central to the project of national expansion and empire building—and not merely precursors of it or peripheral to it” (22). The pressures of migration led to transformations in the nature of family relationships as individuals were forced to adapt and to negotiate their intimate relationships under new circumstances.