Out in Paperback / Abraham in Arms

Abraham in Arms -- War and Gender in Colonial New England by Ann M. Little, 262 pages, ISBN #0-8122-1961-9. Index, source notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled through text.

Conventional wisdom has it that armed conflict in colonial America was a man's enterprise, undertaken while women knitted by the hearth. Colorado State University historian Ann M. Little has a far different take. She argues that gender was at the heart of understanding of war in the colonial era.

Drawing on a 17th century Puritan sermon evoking Old Testament Abraham as a role model for the male listeners, Little paints this ideal as that of "the unquestioned leader of his family and his people in war and peace." But, she writes, "enemies challenged Abraham's authority in New England. Indians threatened the safety of his household, subordinates in his own family threatened his status, and wives and daughters taken into captivity became baptized Catholics, married French or Indian men, and refused to return to New England."

Little's study embodies the period from 1636 to 1763, including the Pequot War, King Philip's War, King William's War, Queen Anne's War, Dummer's War/Rale's War/Greylock's War, King George's War and the Seven Years War/French and Indian War.