Allen, Robert, et al., eds. Living Standards in the Past: New Perspectives on Well-Being in Asia and Europe. 2004. Offers rich comparative perspectives on population growth and living standards among common people.
Bell, Dean Phillip. Jews in the Early Modern World. 2008. A broad examination of Jewish life and relations with non-Jews in the early modern period.
Carpenter, Roger M. The Renewed, the Destroyed, and the Remade: The Three Thought Worlds of the Iroquois and the Huron, 1609–1650. 2004. Explores the culture and beliefs of two Native American peoples in the period of European colonization.
Farr, James R. Artisans in Europe, 1300–1914. 2000. An overview of guilds and artisanal labor in early modern Europe.
Gullickson, Gary L. Spinners and Weavers of Auffay: Rural Industry and the Sexual Division of Labor in a French Village, 1750–1850. 1986. Examines women’s labor in cottage industry in northern France.
Harms, Robert W. The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade. 2002. A deeply moving account of a French slave ship and its victims.
Klein, Herbert S. The Atlantic Slave Trade. 1999. An excellent short synthesis on slavery in the Atlantic world.
Morgan, Jennifer Lyle. Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery. 2004. Focuses on the role of women’s labor in the evolution of slavery in Britain’s North American colonies.
Ormrod, David. The Rise of Commercial Empires: England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 1650–1770. 2003. Examines the battle for commercial and maritime supremacy in the North Sea.
Rothschild, Emma. Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment. 2001. A fascinating reconsideration of Smith and the birth of modern economic thought.
Walsh, Lorena S. Motives of Honor, Pleasure and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607–1763. 2010. A study of the economic and social rationales at work in the management of tobacco plantations and their enslaved labor force.
DOCUMENTARIES
Blackbeard: Terror at Sea (National Geographic, 2006). A documentary recounting the exploits of the most famous eighteenth-century pirate.
Tales from the Green Valley (BBC, 2005). A television series exploring life on a British farm in the seventeenth century.
FEATURE FILMS AND TELEVISION
Amazing Grace (Michael Apted, 2006). An idealistic Briton’s struggle to end his country’s involvement in the slave trade alongside allies Olaudah Equiano and a repentant former slave-ship captain.
The Bounty (Roger Donaldson, 1984). On a voyage in the South Pacific, the cruelty of Captain Bligh leads to a mutiny among his men.
The Last of the Mohicans (Michael Mann, 1992). Set among the battles of the Seven Years’ War (known as the French and Indian War in the colonies), a man raised as a Mohican saves the daughter of an English officer.
Rob Roy (Michael Caton-Jones, 1995). A Scottish Highlander’s effort to better his village by borrowing money to raise and sell cattle is challenged by the treachery of a noble lord and greedy bankers.
WEB SITES
Common-place: The Interactive Journal of Early American Life. Aimed at a diverse audience of scholars, teachers, students, and history buffs, with articles, blogs, and other resources on early America. www.common-place.org
Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African. A Web site featuring material on the movement to abolish slavery and the career of Olaudah Equiano, a former slave who published an autobiography in which he discussed his experience in bondage. www.brycchancarey.com/equiano
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Presents the results of decades of research into the voyages of the transatlantic slave trade, interpretive articles, and an interactive database including ships, ports of arrival and departure, captains, and information on individuals taken in slavery. www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces