Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World, a New History

Nick Bunker. Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and their World, a New History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. 489 pages. $30.00 (hardcover). Plymouth Colony and the English men and women who settled there in the 1620s have been the subject of hundreds of books, at least twenty-five of which have been published in the last twenty-five years. The topics and controversies explored (and re-explored) by recent historians have included religious life, social life, Native American and colonial conflicts and acculturation, land transfers, changes in New England's ecology, the books read by Pilgrims, myths of American origins, law and authority, the role of women, and other matters. Classic first-person accounts of the Pilgrim experience penned by colonists William Bradford and Edward Winslow have been reissued in new editions. Nick Bunker's thoroughly researched new history digs deeper than previous accounts into the economic circumstances that urged migration in the early- to mid-seventeenth century, as well as the intellectual and social backgrounds of the colonists and their backers. He notes that "the very early history of New England contains many hidden, forgotten corners . . . spots of vagueness or omission . . . because, in the British Isles, the evidence lies neglected, scattered in odd places in dozens of archive collections" (5). Who were the Pilgrims? Who influenced them, what were their options, and how and why were they persecuted? How were their decisions affected by their physical and political environment? The author's well argued, multifaceted attempts to answer questions such as these are based on visits to key sites, extensive excavations in archives, and thoughtful reconstruction of places and events. Bunker (an Englishman who has lived and traveled in the United States) is a keen observer of environments and a resourceful researcher, whose skills as an investment banker and financial journalist are clearly on display. The book's economic emphasis includes close analysis of agricultural and trade conditions in England, the stressful sojourn of the Pilgrims in Leiden, the fragility of their hardscrabble early settlement at Plimoth Plantation, and the colony's eventual rescue from failure by means of transatlantic commerce in beaver pelts. The practices of the Church of England and Separatist (or "Brownist") objections to them are also carefully explained, as are the intellectual and spiritual connections linking Calvinism, Puritanism, and Separatism. The circumstances leading to the establishment of Puritan New England, as Bunker explains, were interconnected and complex, but the most important contributing factor was "Calvinist zeal" (408). Bunker's emphasis on cross-disciplinary research (agricultural practices, climate, flora and fauna, trade relations, prices, population movements, etc.) owes much to the influence of the Annales school of historians in France, especially Marc Bloch and Fernand Braudel. His extensive coverage, for example, of the mechanics and economics of the fur trade details the habits of beavers, how they were caught, how the skins were bartered for and transported, how the trade affected Plimoth's relations with Native Americans, which hairs were best suited for which purposes, how the felt was made, how the demand for beaver hats evolved, how the hats were shaped and decorated, and how the price of pelts and finished hats fluctuated in response to market conditions. …